Review of A Corner in Wheat (1909) by André D — 26 Jan 2012

This was very eye opening for a lot of reasons: I knew several things about Griffith 1 that he was a southern racist and 2 a very talented film maker. But it also seems he was also an idealist in other venues and for his day a protagonist for Indian Americans and the poor that were taken advantage of by Wall Street.

In this short film he highlights (based on a series of news articles) the plight of poor wheat farmers and urban poor who are at the mercy of unregulated Wall Street commodity traders who set the price of wheat.

Literally buying at low-low prices crashing farmers into poverty and setting prices so high that bakers and others have to raise thier prices and in-poverishing the city poor while the Traders live like kings, Reminds me a lot of today's problems.