Who Is Andy Hansen's A Farm Boy Remembers?

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.

America’s agricultural economy had already been suffering for a decade when nature conspired against the country to exacerbate the Great Depression. From 1931 through 1939,

The rural depression was a primary component in the Great Depression, as bank advances turned sour, credit became scarce, and banks across the nation shut down. All through the 1930s, more than a million acres of land were influenced in the Dust Bowl, a large number of agriculturists lost their jobs and property, and mass relocation patterns started to arise as ranchers left rustic America looking for work in urban areas. This relocation, or migration, added to Great Depression unemployment hardships, stressed alleviation and advantages programs, and made in many vast American urban areas (The Great Depression Causes).

Farmers where Some of the main people who were affected by not only the great depression , but the dust bowl as well. Farmers were getting paid by AAA to reduce the land used to raise livestock and to produce products such as corn, wheat, tobacco, etc,these were just some of the problems that farmers suffered. Another reason why this event affected the farmers is because of the fact that farmers over farmed their land trying to get it to grow which made it worse and all these dried up crops turned to dust layering their houses so they had to abonden their lifes to head west. Companies paid farmers to plant clover and alfalpha instead of cotton and wheat to reduce not only land usage, but under priced products. Last but not least one of

To start off I should give a little background to help understand what the new deal was fighting, and I will stick more to the agricultural side of the depression in the interest of brevity. The main culprit that hurt the citizens of the U.S. was unemployment. This came about due to a couple of factors. But in my opinion the most important ones are credit, and deflation due to abundance. Both of these reasons abound in the agricultural sector of the time. With world war one being a catalyst farm size grew exponentially with the need to supply efforts overseas. This lead to the need to take out loans to buy expensive machines to work the larger areas. So when the war was over the farmers were still producing at the same quantities to try and maintain their farms. With all of this excess the prices on farm produce dropped to almost nothing. This is lead to many farms being foreclosed on. This was just one area where this happened similar situations occurred in the industrial sector with many

During the 1930s, the United States faced various struggles such as The Great Depression- a time in which farmers suffered severely through many challenges. One of the challenges faced by farmers was the Dust Bowl tragedy; a dust storm affecting many farms throughout the midwest. The tragic Dust Bowl was a consequence due to lack of rainfall in the dry prairie lands, decreasing crop growth, and overproduction in farming causing more exposed land. It occurred because of advancements in farming technology, drought in the Great Plains, and the harvesting of grasslands.

The 1930s were seasons of extensive hardship on the Great Plains. Settlers managed with the Great Depression, as well as with years of droughts that dove an already suffering society into an attack of tireless dust storms that lasted for months. The Dust bowl conveyed an enormous agrarian and monetary hit to the Great Plains and destroyed what was left of the United States Economy during the Great Depression. It continued for a decade, 1930 to 1939, and wrecked ranches and lives all over Texas, Oklahoma panhandles, Colorado, parts of New Mexico, Canada, and Kansas. Monstrous dust storms wrecked pretty much everything from harvests, overwhelming ranches, in such a way it crushed the income and careers of thousands of farmers.

In the 1920s, the economy boomed. Poverty was nowhere to be found and people were living their lives happily. At least in the cities and suburbs. Farmers, however, were not getting their

Arguing that the majority of farmers during the Great Depression benefitted from the government policies produced through President Roosevelt’s New Deal is an inaccurate claim. While history textbooks highlight the improvement of finances for people in rural areas in the United States of America, the personal experiences of family farmers contradict those textbooks. Writers of textbooks about American history should consider looking further into the delicate topic of how the Great Depression effected common farm families. In the West, farmers endured the Dust Bowl. In the North, people in rural areas competed to make a profit. Although statistics show the most economic damage of the Great Depression beginning at the end of 1929, small farm families refer to the effects of the Depression dating back as early as 1925 since government policies mostly benefitted large farm industries as small farms were forced to foreclose.

“This Nation asks for action; and action now” (pg.92). Referring to the New Deal, included was living standards and to prevent future crisis. A goal was to get people back to work. One of the groups that were hit the hardest due to the Great Depression was Farmers. There was an overproduction of products and not enough people consuming or buying their products. Around World War I, prices of crops were very low and the farmers were not making any income, leaving the farmers in trouble when the depression rolled around. With the New Deal, FDR established Agricultural Adjustment Act and prices of crops were raised.

Farmers were affected by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. “Much of the Roaring '20s was a continual cycle of debt for the American farmer, stemming from falling farm prices and the need to purchase expensive machinery.” (UShistory.org). The farmers were struggling with money and affording the tools needed to grow a crop. The farming way of life was slowly fading away. During the era of the Dust Bowl, there was a major drought, so farmers struggled with maintaining enough water for their crops to grow.

The author’s main purpose in writing this book was to explain what went on in Winnebago County during The Great Depression. They discussed issues such as unemployment, debt relief, and slow industry during the depression and how those living in Winnebago County

difficulty on a farm or ranch they had to seek some other opportunity. It was

By the late 1920’s there was a severe drop in farm prices that severely affected all American agriculture. Oklahoma farmers were among those hardest hit. The prices for cotton, wheat, and livestock, the main source of agricultural income, drastically dropped. This caused a cost-price squeeze for farmers because the products that farmers had to buy remained the same. These conditions intensified among Oklahoma farmers who believed that the large corporate and financial institutions had become their oppressors. However hard the economic struggle was for farmers in the agricultural depression of the 1920’s, the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 and 1930 created even worse conditions. The farm commodity prices had dropped to disastrous levels by 1931 and 1932. Cotton had fell to five cents a pound and wheat brought as little as thirty cents a bushel. Other livestock and crops dropped as well; peanuts declined to as low as $1.60 for one hundred pounds, or about one and one-half cents a pound. The gross income of all Oklahoma farm production, both crops and livestock, dropped from $314 million in 1929 to $115 million in 1932. Farmers during this time had lowered their

Total unemployment rose from just over three percent in 1929 to just over twenty five percent in 1933, and did not increase back up to just over seventeen percent in 1939. By 1933 wages had fallen in every industry, with construction being affected the worst, where wages had dropped by half. Wages in 1933 were twenty five percent lower than in 1929. These decreases in wages caused decreases in purchasing across the board. Durable and nondurable sales alike decreased. Nondurable goods fell by forty one percent, where durable goods suffered the most and declined by sixty two percent. In the midst of the depression farmers also had a difficult time where usually they would have been able to survive. Unfortunately, the Great Plains were hit hard with both a drought and dust storms. The dust storms destroyed everything in their paths, leaving farmers without their crops. Small farmers were hit the hardest. Even before the dust storms hit, the invention of the tractor drastically cut the need for manpower on farms. The small farms were usually already in debt, borrowing money for seed and paying it back when their crops came in. When the dust storms damaged the crops, not only could the small farmer not feed himself or his family, he could not pay back his debt. Banks would foreclose on the farms and the farmer and his family would be both homeless and unemployed. Millions of people were out of work across the United States. Many people hit the road