A NATIONAL FARMING CRISIS

Towards the end of the nineteen twenties and through the nineteen thirties of the twentieth century the United States was struck with the largest economic dilemma; the Great Depression. Throughout the Great Depression president’s Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt tried their hardest at reconstructing the nation’s economy so that it would be able to continue it’s path to becoming the world’s greatest nation ever. However, it was a long and several times unsuccessful road which would come to see more than two decades when traveling down it.

During this great depression the farmers of America were greatly effected, maybe more than any other single group of persons in the nation (Bubble Bursts, 133). What came to be known as “Hoovervilles” popped up across the country, composed primarily of unavailing farmers and their families. In the central area of the United States is where most farmers were affected as it was made of mostly plains and open dirt roads. It was here in central America that farmers gained their most known name used throughout the Depression, “okies”. These, simply, were the farmers which harshly suffered during the economic downfall. Through times of terror and hardship, when the nation’s economy bottomed out, America’s farmers were faced with the most complex quandary ever; the national farming crisis of the Great Depression.

It is overt to all persons that when materials are grown or produced for sale that a profit is to be made so that money is made back. Between the years of nineteen fifteen and nineteen-nineteen many farmers in the United States actually prospered very well (Baughman, 89). This acute onset of “good times” was a direct result of European agriculture being temporarily destroyed by World War I (89). As Europe looked to rebuild domestic agriculture they simultaneously looked at nations afar to ephemerally support them. The United States was one of these nations which was looked to for help. Using the supply and demand theory American farmers increased and expanded their supply of crops in order to meet the short-term demand of Europe. This proved to be detrimental to the farming economy of America just several short years later (89).

Eventually, “…Europe was recovering and beginning to rebuild its agricultural sector, it no longer needed to import huge amounts of farm products from abroad…” (Baughman, 89). It was at this time in the early nineteen twenties that the economy of American farming began to plump downward.