You need to do some more studying on the Great Depression. It was every man/woman for themselves. People starved to death by the thousands. Some of the worst work ethics and conditions happened during that time period that sparked our current labor laws including CHILD labor laws. It was common for workers to be locked into their workroom and not allowed out until the shift was over (on several occasions, fires broke out and people burned to death). No lunch, no breaks, nothing. Just work. For pennies. People barely survived. The great Robber Barons gained fame during that period. My own grandmother was nearly killed when a man she agreed to feed snuck in the back door and tried to bludgeon her to death. Luckily she turned just in time to avoid the blow to her head. She fought him off and he ran off. These types of incidents were quite common.
Sorry if I misspoke about history. My family comes from a small farm community in the mid-west, my whole life I heard nothing but stories from my grandparents and their friends of 'this drifter' and 'that hobo', who took them in, what they were like, and a story in the town usually followed by updates of how that person did after the depression. There were a few 'ungrateful vagrants' as my Grandmother would call them but the town had a special way of dealing with them, which they never told the grand-child, which had the odd effect of making them rare in town.
As for the .corp attitude at the time, I don't count 'corporations' as people. We're rapidly headed back towards those kinds of work condition. I hear about modern versions (worked 90, paid for 40 and told to go to hell when brought up to H.R.) all the time and lived one myself.
The people who practiced those labor practices were either incredibly greedy business owners or worse manager enacting corporates instructions. Either way both types of individual should be taken out back and beaten with reeds, but they've always existed. Martha Stewart was running sweat shops during economically 'good' times, people are who they are the situation usually just amplifies some more than others. I believe location had a lot to do with it, urban areas always have more strife during economically difficult times than farm areas. Reason, farm areas generally know how to get food.
Somewhere I posted about returning to farm life, but I can't remember the tread. If one truly knows how to feed them-self, charity becomes easy. If the only means of food is fiat provided by the government, the worse comes out. My grandfather used to tell me, "All you ever really need in life is some black soil, that red shit won't do, a reliable shotgun, and a few seeds and you'll live a good life."
It took a few years, but I figured out what he meant, and can't wait to get back to black soil and a few seeds. The concrete farm isn't for me.