The Ghost of Tom Joad guitar work and the lyrics on many of the tracks are a somber reflection of life in the mid-1990s in America and Mexico. The character of Tom Joad entered the American consciousness in John Steinbeck’s 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, "The Grapes of Wrath", set against the economic hardships of the Great Depression. This spawned a film version starring Henry Fonda, which in turn inspired folk singer Woody Guthrie to pen "The Ballad of Tom Joad". The album's release was followed by Springsteen's solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, which ran from 1995 to 1997 and consisted of mostly small
Great Depression in the Netherlands was unable to structurally improve the situation. As most other countries the Netherlands experienced significant social unrest during the Great Depression. But except for a number of impressive events this unrest was actually quite limited in scale. Statistics of labour strikes for example show that during the 1931-1937 period strikes were actually less common in the Netherlands than in the previous years of economic stability from 1925 to 1930. At the height of the Great Depression in the Netherlands the number of strikes was lowest. [4] Another form of protest was rentstriking, the refusal by a tenant to pay rent