The
First World War severely disrupted agriculture
in Europe. This worked to the advantage of farmers in America who
were able to use new machines such as the combine harvester to dramatically
increase production. During the war American farmers were able to
export the food that was surplus to requirements of the home market.
By the 1920s, European agriculture had recovered and American farmers
found it more difficult to find export markets for their goods. Farmers
continued to produce more food than could be consumed and consequently
prices began to fall. The decline in agricultural profits meant that
many farmers had difficulty paying the heavy mortgages on their farms.
By the 1930s many American farmers were in serious financial difficulties.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected
as president, he asked Congress to pass the Agricultural
Adjustment Act (1933). The AAA paid farmers not to grow crops
and not to produce dairy produce such as milk and butter. It also
paid them not to raise pigs and lambs. The money to pay the farmers
for cutting back production of about 30% was raised by a tax on companies
that bought the farm products and processed them into food and clothing.
Farmers
in the Mid-West faced another serious problem. During the First
World War, farmers grew wheat on land normally used for grazing
animals. This intensive farming destroyed the protective cover of
vegetation and the hot dry summers began to turn the soil into dust.
High winds in 1934 turned an area of some 50 million acres into a
giant dust bowl.
Map from Peter Mantin's
The USA 1914-41
(1) President Herbert
Hoover, statement (8th August, 1930)
As a result of conferences of the last few days, which embrace the
Cabinet, members of the Farm Board, together with Presidents Thompson,
Tabor and Huff of the farm organizations, I have decided to ask the
governors of the states most acutely affected by the drought to meet
with us in Washington next Thursday in order to consider definite
plans for organization of relief. Such organization will need first
to be undertaken by the states, and through them the counties, with
whom the various Federal agencies can cooperate.
I now have the preliminary
survey of the Department of Agriculture of the situation as of August
1st. It shows that the shortage of animal feed crops is most acute
in southeastern Missouri, northern Arkansas, southern Illinois, southern
Indiana, southern Ohio, Kentucky, northern West Virginia, and northern
Virginia with spots of less dimensions in Montana, Kansas, Iowa, and
Nebraska - the latter three states being the less acutely affected.
I shall ask the governors of those states to attend. The feed crops
in some other states are also reduced, the amount of ultimate reduction
depending upon rain during the next two weeks. It may develop that
we shall need to ask the governors of one or two other states also
to attend. In any event, in the most acute areas we should now lay
the foundation for effective local and state organization, the object
of which is to prevent suffering amongst farm families deprived of
support, and to prevent the sacrifice of livestock more than is necessary.
In the acutely affected
area which I have mentioned there are approximately one million farm
families who possess approximately 2¼ million horses and mules,
6 million cattle, and 12 million hogs and sheep. This represents approximately
12% of the animals in the country. Obviously the individual farmers
in the the acute area are differently affected. Their losses run all
the way from a few percent up to their entire animal feed crops. The
actual numbers who are in distress will, therefore, be less than those
gross figures.
Secretary Hyde has instructed
the county agents to make a further more searching and definite report
on the later progress of the drought and the nature of the relief
that will be necessary in the different counties. We are in hopes
that we shall have this information in hand ready for the meeting
of the governors.
The situation is one to
cause a great deal of concern, but it must be borne in mind that the
drought has many affected animal feed, the bulk of the direct human
food production of the country being abundantly in hand. Nevertheless,
there will be a great deal of privation among families in the drought
areas due to the loss of income and the financial difficulties imposed
on them to carry their animals over the winter. The American people
will proudly take care of the necessities of their countrymen in time
of stress or difficulty. Our first duty is to assure our suffering
countrymen that this will be done, that their courage and spirit shall
be maintained, and our second duty is to assure an effective organization
for its consummation.
(2) Herbert
Hoover, statement (14th August, 1930)
We have canvassed
the information secured by state and national surveys as to drought
conditions. While the extent of the damage cannot yet be determined,
it is certain that there are at least 250 counties most acutely affected
where some degree of relief must be provided. It was the view of the
conference that the burden of effective organization to meet the situation
over the winter in the acutely affected counties rests primarily upon
the counties and the states themselves, supplemented by such cooperation
and assistance as may be found necessary on the part of the Federal
Government.
The objective of such relief
is: To assist families over the winter who are deprived of means of
support for failure of their crops. To prevent unnecessary sacrifice
of livestock. Protection to public health.
This is to be accomplished
by: Placing of loans privately or where necessary with assistance
of State or national agencies. Red Cross assistance. Employment. Reduced
railway rates for food, feed and livestock to the distressed districts.
This relief can be achieved justly and effectively only upon first
determination of the counties where such assistance is required, and
second, upon an accurate determination of the needs of each family.
In order that such determinations may be made and assistant supplied
as each case may require, the following organization is agreed upon:
1. Each governor who considers
that a situation requiring emergency relief exists within the state
shall create a Drought Relief Committee under the chairmanship of
a leading citizen, and embracing in its membership a state agricultural
official, a leading banker, a Red Cross representative, a railway
representative, and such farmers and others as the situation may require.
This committee to take general charge of relief measures within the
state.
2. The State Committee
to determine the drought counties where there is need for organized
relief and to organize a committee in each county, likewise under
the chairmanship of a leading citizen, and embracing the county agricultural
agent, a leading banker, county Red Cross leader, farmers and others.
3. The county committees
will receive individual applications for relief and recommend the
method of treatment, and coordinate the various agencies in service
thereto by way of loans, Red Cross assistance, employment, etc. The
state committees, in cooperation with the county committees, to determine
which counties are in need beyond the resources of the people of the
county and in what direction, i. e. whether loans are required beyond
the ability of the local banks, or Red Cross assistance beyond the
resources of the county chapter; what quantities of imports of feed
or food are required, etc. The State Committee to cooperate with national
agencies if these requirements are beyond the state resources.
4. The President will set
up a committee comprising representatives of the Department of Agriculture,
the Federal Farm Board, the Federal Farm Loan Board, the Red Cross,
the American Railway Association, the Public Health Service. This
committee, through its chairman, will coordinate national activities
and national support to the state and county committee.
5. The methods for provision
of credit beyond local or state resources for the purchase of feed,
seed, movement of livestock, or support of families over the winter
will be developed by state committees in cooperation with the Federal
Farm Board, the Federal Farm Loan Board, the Intermediate Credit System,
and other Federal agencies.
6. The Red Cross will organize
its own committees in each drought county, the chairman of which will
be a member of the County Drought Relief Committee. The National Red
Cross has made a preliminary allocation of $5,000,000 pending determination
of the aggregate need.
7. The railways have already
generously reduced rates by 50% on food and feed inward to the drought
counties and livestock movement outward, to dealers and persons who
are entitled to relief and so designated by the county agents or the
committees created above.
8. The Department of Agriculture
will secure and disseminate information as to sources of feed supply
and localities to which livestock may be shipped. It will examine
the possibilities of advancing state road allotments to drought areas
in order to increase employment.
9. In the states of Iowa,
Nebraska, Kansas, and others having a surplus of feed, it is recommended
that a state committee be set up to cooperate with the committees
in the states of surplus livestock.
(3)
New
Republic Magazine (1932)
Beginning in the Carolinas and extending clear into New Mexico are
fields of unpicked cotton that tell a mute story of more cotton than
could be sold for enough, even to pay the cost of picking. Vineyards
with grapes still unpicked, orchards of olive trees hanging full of
rotting fruits and oranges being sold at less than the cost of production.
(4) Oscar
Heline, farmer from Iowa, interviewed by Studs
Terkel in Hard Times (1970)
Grain was being burned. It was cheaper than coal. In South Dakota,
the county elevator listed corn as minus three cents a bushel. If
you wanted to sell them a bushel of corn, you had to bring in three
cents. We had lots of trouble on the highway, people were determined
to withhold produce from the market - livestock, cream, butter, eggs,
what not. If they would dump the produce, they would force the market
to a higher level. The farmers would man the highways and cream cans
were emptied in ditches and eggs dumped out. They burned the Trestie
Bridge, so the trains wouln't be able to haul grain.
(5) C. B. Baldwin, was assistant
to Henry Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture, in Franklin D. Roosevelt's
administration in 1933.
The New Deal was an ineasy coalition. Fights developed very early
between two factions: one, representing the big farmers, and the other,
the little farmers. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA)
came into being shortly after I got to Washington. Its purpose was
to increase farm prices, which were pitifully low. All the farmers
were in trouble, even the big ones.
Hog prices had just gone to hell. They were four, five cents a pound?
The farmers were starving to death. It was decided to slaughter piggy
sows (a pregnant pig). The AAA decided to pay the farmers to kill
them and the little pigs. Lot of them went into fertilizer. Then a
great cry went up from the press, particularly the Chicago Tribune,
about Henry Wallace slaughtering these little pigs. You'd think they
were precious babies.
You had a similar situation on cotton. Prices were down to four cents
a pound and the cost of producing was probably ten. So a program was
initiated to plow up cotton. A third of the crop, if I remember. Cotton
prices went up to ten cents, maybe eleven.
(6)
Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio broadcast,
Fireside Chat (6th September, 1936)
I
have been on a journey of husbandry. I went primarily to see at first
hand conditions in the drought states; to see how effectively Federal
and local authorities are taking care of pressing problems of relief
and also how they are to work together to defend the people of this
country against the effects of future droughts.
I saw drought devastation
in nine states.
I talked with families
who had lost their wheat crop, lost their corn crop, lost their livestock,
lost the water in their well, lost their garden and come through to
the end of the summer without one dollar of cash resources, facing
a winter without feed or food -- facing a planting season without
seed to put in the ground.
That was the extreme case,
but there are thousands and thousands of families on western farms
who share the same difficulties.
I saw cattlemen who because
of lack of grass or lack of winter feed have been compelled to sell
all but their breeding stock and will need help to carry even these
through the coming winter. I saw livestock kept alive only because
water had been brought to them long distances in tank cars. I saw
other farm families who have not lost everything but who, because
they have made only partial crops, must have some form of help if
they are to continue farming next spring.
I shall never forget the
fields of wheat so blasted by heat that they cannot be harvested.
I shall never forget field after field of corn stunted, earless and
stripped of leaves, for what the sun left the grasshoppers took. I
saw brown pastures which would not keep a cow on fifty acres.
Yet I would not have you
think for a single minute that there is permanent disaster in these
drought regions, or that the picture I saw meant depopulating these
areas. No cracked earth, no blistering sun, no burning wind, no grasshoppers,
are a permanent match for the indomitable American farmers and stockmen
and their wives and children who have carried on through desperate
days, and inspire us with their self-reliance, their tenacity and
their courage. It was their fathers' task to make homes; it is their
task to keep those homes; it is our task to help them with their fight.
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