If we were living a hundred years earlier, a lot of people would be hanging from lamp posts.
The only things preventing this from happening today is knowing the FBI can do their job fairly well. Reasonable people don't want to sit in cage for doing what must be done.
That's not the only thing, not even in the USA. The New Deal happened, and things were a lot worse before it than they are even now for those entitled to SNAP payments — though of course, if SNAP stays off the way I suspect it will, and if the undocumented agricultural workers stay out of the USA, this may change very hard and very fast, and those invented stories about "immigrants eating pets" may turn into actual true stories about ICE agents being cannibalised, thanks to how hunger works and how the 2nd amendment seems to be part of the American New New Testament with Gospels According to John, Ben, Alex, and Tom.
The only things preventing this from happening today is knowing the FBI can do their job fairly well. Reasonable people don't want to sit in cage for doing what must be done.