Abner, who experiences malnourishment and loses a finger at fourteen years old as a result of a depression, thinks of economic hard times as “a natural phenomenon like winter itself, mysterious, universal, cruel” (12). He and his family suffer terribly each time the economy takes a downturn: Abner’s parents die during the Great Depression and he is unable even to give his mother a proper burial; Milly and Daisy become household drudges in turn, each of them weakened by the labor of caring for the family during times of great privation. But the Shutts also suffer whenever Ford updates his production methods to make them more efficient and cost-effective; the assembly-line, with its speed-ups and stretch-outs, sends Abner home exhausted every night and turns him into an old man before his time.

The family’s attempts to secure a middle-class existence costs them a great deal of money, money that ends up in someone else’s pocket. For example, they buy a house when Abner gets a bonus, and the bank collects a tremendous amount of interest from these humble people:

They paid thirty-one hundred and fifty dollars for the house, which they could have got for a thousand dollars less in the Before Bonus days.