The Haymakers

The Worst Hard Times by Timothy Egan conveys the story of farmers who decided to prosper on the plains during the 1800s, in places such as Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. They decided to make living, and some stayed during the worst droughts in the United States in 1930s. High temperatures and dust storms destroyed the area, killing animals and humans. This competently book reveals the prosperity for many, later revealing the time of the skinny cows. The story is based on the testimonies of the survivors or through their diaries/journals and on historical research. The author describes the struggles of the nesters, in which Egan clearly blames these catastrophic events on the settler’s hubris.

Despite the flushed predictions of prosperity that had lured new settlers to the plains, the reality was more difficult. The farmers claimed that they did not have enough land, money, and transportation (Doc C). The farmers went into in a never ending cycle if they did not have a good harvest. As Booker Washington explains the farmers had no money so they had to borrow money from the banks which charged 12 to 30 percent interest. The interest the farmers were hit with was nearly impossible to repay so they had to mortgage everything and if the mortgage wasn’t paid the land was foreclosure which led the yeomen to become tenant farmers (Doc B). With periods of drought growing good crops was hard. Leading Economic Sectors shows how the farmers predicament of not being able to make a very

American family farmers produced goods for the global economy; however, after 1870, the depression struck the nation, meaning that the produce families grew for the market and economy would be sold for at a lower price. A family who had contributed themselves to the nation’s economy would find themselves in an event of possibly, and most likely, losing their farm since at that time farming insurance wasn’t available. Ownership of farms were not secure or stable during this time of depression.

Ben Tillman was born August 11, 1847 in Trenton, South Carolina to Sophia Hancock and Benjamin Ryan Tillman. Ben thought of himself as a “dirt farmer”, but was actually purely flourishing. He owned a 2,200-acre farm with a total of 30 workers. Just like his fellow farmer “buddies”, Tillman came close to losing everything in the 1880s. Before Ben Tillman came along to “save the day” many farmers were saddened due to the decline of income, high railroad shipping charges, and high interest rates

Jennie presented the cruelties of factory farming but our continued purchase of factory farm products as an example of simple inattention in action, but there are countless other examples occur every day.

The new technology used in American agriculture made it overall more productive and widespread while creating mixed results for the farmers. The advancement in machines like reapers, threshers, and mowers to harvest grains produced contrasting outcomes. An obvious benefit was some of the ease brought to the farmers. The human labor involved in harvesting grain by hand with a scythe or by a simple, one horse-powered machine was far greater than harvesting with a big, multi-horse powered machine. The devices made work simpler, faster, and more efficient for the farmers by relying on animal energy and technology (Document D). With promises of larger crops with less exertion, the new machines became very desirable to farmers in order to stay in competition with their peers; however, buying these machines also pushed many of them into unfortunate financial situations. Not only was the actual

[…] If a farmer wanted to expand operations, he required the deep pockets of Northern banks to lend him the money to buy additional equipment, as well as additional labor. (13)

In 1890 clergyman Washington Gladden wrote an article called “The Embattled Farmers”. In it he blamed the ruin of the farmers on “protective tariffs, trusts…speculation in farm products, over-greedy middlemen, and exorbitant transportation rates.”

Using primarily interview and observation methods, Seth Holmes gives us a detailed description of the hierarchies that exist and come into play on the farm. He interviews a large range of individuals, from top corporate leaders, to the poor immigrant pickers. By including direct quotes from people he meets as well as experiences of his own, Holmes is able to give the reader a grasp on the challenges, powers, and misconceptions that characterize each level of the hierarchy. He starts at the top with an interview with the top executives at the

Alongside the growth of large farms, crops are being subsidized which leads to the prices of the goods being kept at a low price (Toews). For a family farm, this means producing a crop that is not cost effective which eventually drives the family farms out of business. Once these large corporations produce the crop, it is then shipped to the manufacturers

And it came that the owners no longer worked on their farms. They farmed on paper; and they forgot the land, the

When we mention about farm, most of us have this image of a vast green pasture where farmers spend most of their time herding livestock but that idyllic picture is just a thing from the past. Since the 1930s in America, small farms started to wither away, made way to bigger and highly mechanized factory farms. It all traced back to McDonalds and the booming of fast food restaurants (Food, Inc 2008). Fast food restaurants had become successful because they could produce tasty food with cheaper cost. Their franchises eventually made them a multi-million-dollars industry. Big business required big suppliers. Small rural farms cannot meet the demand for supply and they quickly fade away. Farmers were being replaced by corporations in

To begin with, the modern-day farmer faces many of the same struggles as the nineteenth century farmers in Hamlin Garland's "Under the Lion's Paw." -1 For instance, even with technological advances and time saving equipment, the farmers of today still perform difficult labor with long hours much the same as the farmers of yesterday. In “Under the Lion’s Paw,” Garland's farming family “rose early and toiled without intermission till the darkness fell on the plain, then tumbled into bed, every bone and muscle aching with fatigue, to rise with the sun next morning to the same round of the same ferocity of labor” ( ). The nature of farming demands the same strenuous cycle of Present-day farmers.-3

My Grandfather 's dream as child was to farm. That dream became a reality in the 1960s. Raising his family, which included my mother, on the family farm. Economic turmoil that proceed the 1980s Midwest Farm Crisis forced him to sell his dream in the late 1970s. I spent my childhood with him detailing his idealized view of the farming which included his love of it as child and the greatest goal he could achieve as a first generation American was to own a farm.

Introduction – Choosing an occupation can be based on a number of factors including personal interests, educational attainment, or family tradition. Farming is a profession that has existed for many years in practically every country in the world. It is required to produce commodities that are needed for human consumption such as meats, vegetables, and animal by products like dairy and eggs. The U.S. Census describes a farm as any establishment which produced and sold, or normally would have produced and sold, $1,000 or more of agricultural products during the year. The Census states that there are over 2.2 million farms in the United States. In spite of the predominance of family farms, there is strong evidence of a trend toward