A valuable lesson can be learned from the unnamed tenant farmer who is speaking with the man trying to buy up all his property for a small fraction of what it is worth in chapter nine of the Grapes of Wrath. Through his very detialed description of what all of the items he is selling mean to him and through his foretelling of what exactly the future will hold when machines take over and the tenant farmers are no more, the unnamed tenant farmer teaches the lessosn tsshat things have more value than just what you can sell them for and that someday people will not be happy in a world dominated by machines and wish that the tenant farmers were still around.
The farmer tells the man about all of the things that the mares mean to his family. He talks about how they are some of the hardest working, most in sync horses he has ever worked with and ould practically be twins based upon the way they work in tandem. He also talks about how much his little girl loved them and loved to braid their mans and tie them off with her hair ribbons. All of this he tells the man in order to make him understand just exactly what he is telling him is worth pennies, because the tenant farmer knows that these mares are not all just about their set market value. They are about the job and happiness they can bring to a family, because they become family.
The farmer warns the man that the hard-working, loving tenant farmers are the glue that holds the country together. Everything they do they do with honor and diligence and they believe in working hard and putting human touch into every row of crop they plant or harvest. He warns the man that soem day theyw ill need those men to put life back into the mindless machinery world they are creating, but those farmers will be destroyed and unable to save them.
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