The Great Depression: Life In America
The Great Depression: Rural Life In America
Rural life in America had been the lifeblood of the nation since it’s foundation in 1776. The agriculture business in the early years of America’s short history as a nation, was the staple by which American’s made a living. America’s prosperity rested with the prosperity of it’s farmers. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, every man, woman, and child in one form or another had a direct connection to the farm, and depended on it’s success for their living standards.
As the twentieth century dawned, the agriculture industry slowly began to become a marginal factor in the American way of life with the Industrial Revolution. Economic centers were now the massive factory centers located in high density population areas. Cultural influences were taken ahold of by the appeal of the urban entertainment industry. Social standards shifted from the tight-knit communities to cities teeming with bodies. America underwent a largely disportionate shift in it’s demographics through the early twenthieth century, leaving rural existence a silent partner in America’s prosperity.
That preference for urban life and the abandonment of the rural community swapped positions following the crash of the stock market in the early 1930’s. The reason for the sudden reversal of population migration is complex, but can be best understood by understanding the basic nature of agriculture in any economy. To put it in it’s most base form, agriculture is a self-sustaining and insulated industry. Where as other industries are dependent upon the level of demand of the consumer to dictate the level of production, agriculture is not. Regardless of the state of any economy, the populace is requires nurishment, and hence the demand for food never plummets. The ability of the consumer to comsume mass quantities may drop, but it the first product the consumer will purchase. For the farmer, even throughout the
Great Depression, there was a sustainable level of demand for his product. That was one of two reasons for the attraction of farming during such hard times. The other was the fact that life on a farm was essentially self-sufficient. The essence of farming has always been to live off the land, to harness the power of the land to sustain a certain level of living. The forest provided the material necessary for shelter. The land and their industry provided the food the needed to live. Everything else they had already learned, because of the remoteness of their location, to provide for themselves.
Jon Acorn, who lived with his family on a farm during the
Great Depression, witnessed the migration and understood the reason’s behind it from experience:
“
Although life was difficult in the rural coutry, life in the cities was even harsher. I had a friend who was a banker, and when the stock crash happened, he and his family were left with nothing. Fortunately, he had a summer cottage in Plympton, and he and his family were able to support themselves on the small farm they owned. This seemed to be a trend - many families from the cities began to move out into the country where they could self-support themselves by growing their own victory gardens.”
For those unable to cope with the tough economic times, found their farms foreclosed on by the banks.
That is not to say that rural life during the
Great Depression did not endure hardships like the rest of Americans. There were still some aspects of the famer’s life that were dependent upon other industries. Clothing was still purchased in the nearest towns, and with no money to spare, rural families were forced to make due like taking the bags from purchased grain and using the material to make clothing. Farming equipment had to be purchased from vendors, and a simple breakdown in one piece of equipment could send an entire family into poverty. Without the tools to cultivate the land, the farmer became fiscally sterile.
The hardest hit area of rural America were local government services. Already existing on a strict budget prior to 1929, the years that followed saw an abrupt free fall of incoming taxes. Numerous rural families choose to neglect tax payments, preferring to defer to the demands of their family rather then the tax laws of the local government body. The relationship between the government and the community in rural parts of the country lacked a sense of symbiotic reciprocaion. The people viewed their local government as a luxury, and the local government viewed it’s taxpayers as generous. This free wheeling, friendly, and casual existence would soon be forced to change to meet the hardships faced in the early 1930’s.
Faced with budget shortfalls, rural communities saw the local services they had come to take for granted collapse. The education system could no longer afford to pay their teachers, and schools began to close down. For many areas, the closing of a school meant the death of their children’s education as the next closest school was often too far to travel to. Rural counties had to scale back their medical services and, in extreme cases, were forced to close hospitals. With poor sanitation and the lack of electricity common in many rural areas, disease was a constant enemy to be battled which became a losing one for many families. The Red Cross was a life line for the most remote families and the poorest of poor living in rural America, but as donations dropped sharply in the early 30’s, these people were abandoned to their own destruction.
Rural children during the 'Great Depression' suffered through disease, hunger, and the loss of an education.
The relationship rural communities had always enjoyed with their local governments quickly began to change as the
Great Depression’s effects spread to the outskirts of American life. What was once a generally relaxed connection fermented into a hostile one as local governments took drastic steps to collect taxes. Ordered by county courts, local collectors began to seize the property of those individuals who did not pay their taxes. Although it was necessary to fund government services, it threw already struggling families into abject poverty. The passive relationship between rural government and community became one of resentment and anger often spilling over into hostile incidents between officials and the citizenry.
Throughout 1929 and even in the early part of 1930, the rural communties dotting America’s landscape had remained insulated from the stock market crash and it’s economic woes. The
Great Stock Market Crash and the
Great Depression were an urban problem, and there were more pressing concerns for rural residents worry themselves with. While urbanites dealt with their worthless stacks of paper stock, the rural populace worried about death tolls on local roads, the state shucking contest, the arrest of local boys for assaulting a local girl, and the showing of movies in church after services. What would be seen as petty, trivial problems through the eyes of urbanites were still the main concerns of those living in rural America.
Eventually, rural America would feel the wrath of the
Great Depression, albiet in a far reduced form then their fellow Americans in the city. When they did, it turned a hard life even harder. The struggle turned into a fight for life, but rural communities managed far better then anyone else during the early 1930’s. Yet, the most important aspect of change wasn’t the economic troubles brought on by the
Great Depression. It was the mindset of the rural man towards government. As he watched what limited services had been provided by the government to him either shrink or vanish, the distant respect he had for government turned to anger. And as he watched his property seized for the benefit of the government, that anger turned to unbridled hatred.
The most important effects of the
Great Depression on rural life in America was not necessarily the economic problems produced, but the psychological alteration in mindset of the farmer towards his government. For the farmer, the government had simply been ‘there’. A shared respect for the government’s presence existed, but it was of a distant tone. The government didn’t intrude upon the daily lifes of the rural family, nor adversely influence it’s well-being. As that changed in the early years of the
Great Depression, so did the farmer’s interest in politics. That interest although not voluntary, but it would prove critical to the state of politics in the years to come.
The Great Depression: Urban Life In American
The
Roaring 20’s was a golden age for American culture, and it was the metropolitan centers of America that reaped the benefits. With the stock market continually on a broad ascension, urbanites were free to bask in the excesses of wealth and luxury. Whatever vice city dwellers preferred, they were able to afford the cost of indulgence. Social standing and interaction became a paramount concern to the affluent urbanite as technology had washed away what would have otherwise burdened them.
Where as the farmer worked for everything around him, the city dweller often expected certain things to be available for his consumption. Under all the layers of differences between rural and urban life prior to the
Great Depression, the most base difference was that while the farmer learned to appreciate his backbreaking labor, the urbanite took nearly everything around him for granted. He expected the luxurious lifestyle to always be with him.
Once the
Great Stock Market Crash struck, the urbanite abruptly faced the reality of hardship. Being far more cultured and economically sauve then his farming counterpart, the city populace had staked the majority of their economic structure in the rising stock market. The urbanite was either one of two types - one, a business owner or investor who personally owned stock shares, or two, a factory/corporate worker whose job security depended upon the market’s proficiency. While the farmer staked his economic existence in the land, the urbanite staked his in speculative value. There was nothing that could fully deprive the farmer of his live style, but all it took was the panic towards an overestimated market for the city denizen to watch his vanish in a puff of smoke.
Unemployment offices in American cities found themselves flooded with applicants seeking relief.
Following the
Great Stock Market Crash and in the two years after, urban life lay in ruins. Those pieces of paper that were once worth an unimaginable amount of money, were worth more as a heating source. Investors were left with nothing. Factory workers were laid-off en mass to return to their families in disgrace. Business owners either watched helplessly as they went from the black to the red, or in the case of small operations, had to close their doors all together. The city went from wealth to abject poverty in the matter of a few short years.
Because much of a cities economy rested on the production of luxury consmable goods and services, and comsumers simply did not have the money to sustain a high living standard, devestation spread throughout every major metropolitan area across the United States. Unemployment reached 25% in the early 1930’s, primarily effecting those that lived in and around the city. If you lived in New York, Boston, or Chicago you either knew or experienced for yourself what it was like to loose your home and be thrown to the street with the clothes on your back.
Without shelter to shield themselves from the weather, nor money to put food in their mouths, a mass migration began to take hold over the dimming lights of American cities. Where once people had fled the countryside for the highrises of the city, people found themselves going back to the rural landscapes. This time it was not by choice, but out of neccessity - out of a chance for oppurtunity of any kind. What had made life easier for farmer during the
Great Depression is what attracted city folk, and that was the ability to live off the land.
The promise of a better life outside the city often lead to even worse living conditions as migrant worker camps sprung up across America.
For many who had the know-how, the transistion from urban pleasures to rural toils proved fruitful as they could now provide what was necessary for themselves and their family. While for many others it proved to be nothing more then a nomadic trip through the countryside of America in search of something, anything better. Migrant worker camps sprung up throughout America where desperate and poor men, women, and child would perform the hardest, arduous work for next to nothing. At the migrant camps, for shelter families crowded into tents that formed minature cities. Sanitation was deplorable with the nearest river often acting as both toilet and bathtub. Life had become, for them, a living nightmare that receded from memory only in sleep.
For urbanites of the 20’s, life had been turned upside down in the blink of an eye. Their life’s where thrown into absolute disarray as the money and jobs dried up. Having gone from a comfortable, almost carefree macrocosm of existence into a struggle that never knew what the next day might bring, many felt betrayed and cheated by both big business and the government. There was an acute sense within the city during the early years of the
Great Depression that it was a powder keg attached to a lit fuse. Yet, along with feeling deceived, urban inhabitants carried with them the loss of hope and dreams. To speak to many who were hit the hardest, unable to survive adequately, there was a dreary sense of disownment to their plight. It left part of the
Roaring 20’s generation existing only as a past success, succumbing to any part of a rebirth in the future; leaving a portion of disaffected citizens unwilling to care what path their country might take next as life was too hard to ever think about anything larger then food, shelter, and surviving.
Can't wait to see how this turns out, I love it so far.
