from I, Candidate for Governor:  And How I Got Licked by Upton Sinclair

(12-13)  It is easy to imagine the unemployed of California in a system of production for use because of the efforts which they have made to establish such a system for themselves.  All over the State self-help and barter groups have sprung up.  There have been literally hundreds of them, and for a year or two I had been hearing stories of their achievements.  In Compton, an industrial town south of Los Angeles, they served 19,745 meals at a total money cost of less than one-half cent a meal [in 1934 or $0.08 in 2009 dollars].  My friend, Hjalmar Rutzebeck, author of “Alaska Man’s Luck,” was active in the UXA (Unemployed Exchange Association) of Oakland, and told me marvelous tales about the complicated procedure whereby a group of several thousand hungry men would manage to make something out of nothing.  They would find a farmer with a crop of peaches rotting on the trees, and who needed to have his barn painted.  They would find a paint merchant who would accept some canned peaches in return for paint.  Some of these operations were extremely complicated, involving an elaborate circle of activities with a dozen different participants.