THE WESTERN STATES nervous under the beginning change. Texas and
Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, New Mexico, Arizona, California. A single family
moved from the land. Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants the
land. The land company—that's the bank when it has land—wants tractors, not
families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong?
If this tractor were ours it would be good—not mine, but ours. If our tractor turned the
long furrows of our land, it would be good. Not my land, but ours. We could love that
tractor then as we have loved this land when it was ours. But this tractor does two
things—it turns the land and turns us off  the land. There is little difference between
this tractor and a tank. The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think
about this.
One man, one family driven from the  land; this rusty car creaking along the
highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and I am
bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in
and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children
listen. Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two
squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the
thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split
and from its splitting grows the thing you hate—"We lost  our land." The danger is
here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first "we"
there grows a still more dangerous thing: "I have a little  food" plus "I have none." If
from this problem the sum is "We have a little food," the thing is on its way, the
movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are
ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side-meat stewing in a single
pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The  night draws down. The baby has a cold.
Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's blanket—take it for the baby.
This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning—from "I" to "we."
If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might
preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know that
Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results,  not causes, you might survive. But that
you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I," and cuts you
off forever from the "we."
The Western States are nervous under the beginning change. Need is the stimulus to
concept, concept to action. A half-million people moving over the country; a million
more, restive to move; ten million more feeling the first nervousness.
And tractors turning the multiple furrows in the vacant land.