Archaeology suggests the Egyptian pyramids were built largely by a mix of skilled craftsmen and farmers who worked in the off-season, when the Nile flooded their fields. These workers were paid in high-quality food and given tax exemptions, and they were housed in organised settlements near the sites. The idea of slave labour goes back to the Greek writer Herodotus, who wrote about the pyramids centuries after they were built. Later the belief that the builders were Israelite slaves appeared, but that story arose long after the pyramids were finished.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.