America’s ever-expanding autumn industrial complex
If Greene means that urbanized upper classes travel to the countryside for a bit of entertainment playing peasant he's at least 700 years too late. That pastime isn't anything uniquely American - neither are apples, as he relates - nor has the contrast between the two gone unnoticed since Giovanni Boccaccio. In Greene's eyes it's just another sign of the Oppression Of The Working Class, but it can be bent to other forms of resentment as well:
what Jezebel’s Hazel Cills, in “How America Invented the White Woman Who Just Loves Fall,”
Yep, it's racist and sexist as well as classist. Don't drink that pumpkin spice latte, kids, it's a sign of oppression! Anything you like is wrong!!
As for myself I ended up feeding most of my apples to the deer this year courtesy of some unfortunately timed weather, but when I think of the oppression of the working class - me - that saved, why, I'll just sit back and sip some autumn ale and enjoy the leaves. I'll feel appropriately guilty some other time.
So ifI see black folks out picking apples can I remind them this is a white women loves fall activity?