Quarto. 23, (2)pp. Here reprinted in sharply executed type is one of Steinbeck's earliest short stories, first published in the August 1936 issue of Argosy. It captures in stirring prose and regional sensibility the themes of social cohesion (what Steinbeck called the "social organism), the heavy weight of American capitalism, and the realities of the Depression-era working class forced westward. Here a grandfather, in a manner similar to the later Willie Loman, embodies the deleterious condition of the westward pioneer, compelled to identify with his career, such as it is, but listless and lonely without it. The resulting critique of American work and greed, of the pillar on which it elevates the individual and the job above the group and its humane welfare, is altogether appropriate to the period and even today, when the capitalist engine drowns the labor that makes it run. Bound in quarter brown cloth with textured paper over boards. Fine. Former owner's bookplate laid in.