Offtopic but, the funny part about that statement is that the only place the socialist ever got the poor's support was in China during its civil war and then only because Mao was directly giving (bribing) them with land in exchange for their support. Everywhere else the main population of socialists were government bureaucrats. Ironically, all authoritarian ideologies (fascism too) happen this way, with low level government officials being the most zealous and the core supporters. The whole "revolution of the people" narrative is just propaganda, like your quote.
I mean technically I'm a millionaire because I own a house. This said the scale from the time the quote was written till now would mean I need like 20 million +
I feel fairly confident in asserting without bothering to check that there are proportionally more $20-millionaires in the United States than there were in Steinbeck's time as well so Steinbeck is still on the wrong side of history. While capitalism certainly needs to be regulated to curb its worst excesses, far more than it is now, it's abundantly clear that it has outperformed the alternatives.
>Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.