Farm Problems before the Crash.

Economic depression had struck American farmers earlier than any other element in American society. Indeed, by the early 1920s American farmers were already enduring a severe economic crisis. During World War I the American economy, including farming, had gone into an all-out sprint of productivity. When the war ended, however, the European markets in which American food had been sold were closed off by tariff restrictions. Newly and traditionally cultivated lands in the United States continued to be farmed with evermore-efficient machinery and higher-yielding fertilizers. The result was a vast surplus of agricultural goods and livestock. In the competitive domestic marketplace the purchasing power of Americans could consume only so much cotton, corn, wheat, beef, and pork. As farmers competed to undersell their competitors, who were often their neighbors, prices fell through the floor.

The...