Great Depression
INTRODUCTION
Most people understand that during the Great Depression there was a lot of unemployment and a lot of suffering in America. They also know that a stock market crash was somehow involved. But long before the infamous stock market crash of 1929, the American farmer was struggling. Technology made it possible to sow and harvest more with fewer man-hours, and this had two very important consequences. One is that farm laborers lost their jobs while smaller operations had the opportunity to maximize their profits – until so many individual farmers had the same idea that the market became oversaturated. In a cruel irony, the fact that so many Americans could not afford to feed their families during the Great Depression was caused by the fact that farmers grew too much food! This Primary Source Exercise is designed to provide some understanding of how that situation came about and how President Roosevelt and his administration sought to solve the problem of farmers not being able to make a living due to extremely low commodity prices.
DOCUMENTS
Document 1 is oral history from Mr. LeRoy Hankel of Nebraska, as he tells of his experience of being a farmer during the Great Depression.
Documents 2 is a collection of photographs of farmers slaughtering commodity livestock during the Great Depression.
INSTRUCTIONS
1) Read Chapter 25 in its entirety. (Chapter 25 is attached)
textbook reference:
Corbett, P. Scott, Volker Janssen, John M. Lund, Todd J. Pfannestiel, and Paul S. Vickery. U.S. History. Houston, TX: OpenStax, Rice University, 2017.
2) Watch the interview or read Document 1 and observe the photographs in Document 2.
3) Respond the the questions below.
Write a minimum of 250 words total.
The format should be: Times New Roman with 12 size font, standard margins for college essays, and following the traditional format for a scholarly essay.
A maximum of 10% similarity score is appropriate. Your answers must be complete, unique and in your own words. Quote only when you are trying to analyze a specific passage. Cite all work that you consult at the end of your reply. Skip paper identifiers like date, name, title. Do not write out the questions.
Document 1
LeRoy Hankel, “Falling Prices after the Crash,” interviewed for Living History Farm by Bill Ganzel, 2003.
“I was quite young at that time, but I still remember the crash. The Depression actually started in ’29. That’s when that stock market and everything went. Then everything dropped. Corn, I seen on the board in Hampton – that’s where we lived at that time when it started – nine-cents a bushel. But very little of it was sold at nine, most of it was sold at 10- and 11[-cents]. And everything just went all to pieces. Eggs was 10-cents a dozen. And your wheat, I really don’t know just what the wheat did, dropped to. My memory tells me somewhere around 70-cents. It went down to about 70-cents a bushel… It just dropped to nothing. We had, I believe Dad had over 100 acres of corn and it all went for around 10-cents a bushel. Land prices dropped down from 200-250 dollars an acre. It was getting down to $40. And nobody, nobody sold and nobody bought. There was nothing going on at all. And, everything just went all to pieces.”
Find the complete interview with video at this website, Wessels Living History Farm in York, Nebraska
http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/movies/hankel_money_04.html
Source: Written by Bill Ganzel of the Ganzel Group. First written and published in 2003. “Wessels Living History Farm” website, designed to provide learners an in-depth look at farming in the 1920s and beyond. The site can be found at http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org. Bill Ganzel served as executive producer, writer, designer and editor of the site, particularly the 1930s and 1940s sections of it.
Document 2
Burial of Government Purchased and Condemned Livestock (photograph), 1934, and A Slaughtered Pig (photograph), ca. 1933
Source – Pigs eating on a farm – Library of Congress
Source: A Slaughtered Pig – FDR Library
A Slaughtered Pig (ca. 1933). President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 reduced hogs and other food in order to increase agricultural prices. The program was a success, but the idea of slaughtering livestock when there were so many who were hungry drew criticism. The AAA (1933) was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1937. A new Agricultural Adjustment Act was then passed in 1938.
QUESTIONS TO ANSWER
- What is the Agricultural Act of 1933, and what was the purpose of it?
- According to Mr. Hankell, what is the evidence of falling commodity prices? Be sure to quote where necessary and also to write a paragraph or more.
- What is happening in the pictures that make up Document 2? Describe the images and contextualize them historically, meaning that you should mention what they are representing and why in a paragraph or more.
- Why do you think the government didn’t just arrange to have excess food commodities shipped to places where people didn’t have enough to eat during the Great Depression?
- Do you agree with the logic behind the Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933)? In other words, if you were a farmer, would you have been able to either plow under your cotton or destroy your livestock? Why or why not?
