xt7j0z71015q https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7j0z71015q/data/mets.xml Vance, Rupert B., 1899-1975 Works Progress Administration Employment Publications Vance, Rupert B., 1899-1975 1939 32 pages 23 cm. text UK holds archival copy for ASERL Collaborative Federal Depository Program libraries. Call Number: Y 3.W 89/2:57/3 books English Washington: U.S. Govt. Print. Off. This digital resource may be freely searched and displayed in accordance with U. S. copyright laws. Works Progress Administration Employment Publications Agriculture -- United States Unemployed -- United States Rural Relief and Recovery, 1939 text Rural Relief and Recovery, 1939 1939 1939 2021 true xt7j0z71015q section xt7j0z71015q

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SOCIAL PRQBLEMS

Number 1. Depression Pioneers
Number 2. Rural Youth
Number 3. Rural Relief and Recovery

WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION

F. C. Harrington, Administrator

RURAL RELIEF
AND RECOVERY

by
Rupert B. Vance

SOCIAL PROBLEMS ° NUMBER 3
1939

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON: 1939

This pamphlet, the third Of a series,
is designed to present reliable nontechnical
information on social problems of general
interest. A more comprehensive discus-
sion of the problems covered in the pam-
phlet will be found in Seven Lean Years,

by T. J. Woofter, Jr. and Ellen Winston, a
publication of the University of North
Carolina Press.

RURAL RELIEF AND
RECOVERY

ANY PEOPLE Find it hard to understand why
there should be so much need for relief in rural
sections,especially among the farmers who supply the
Nation with food. It is much easier to understand
the need for relief among the city unemployed, who,
without their regular pay checks, are soon Without
food or the means of paying for shelter.

The farmer has long been a symbol of economic
self-sufﬁciency. Yet, throughout the depression
rural families in large numbers were recipients of
relief. Rural relief needs were less than city needs
at first. But rural relief needs mounted propor—
tionately year after year. Local relief funds became
exhausted, and the States and the Federal Govern-
ment had to take over the burden.

In 1935, when a peak was reached, about 2%
million rural families, comprising more than 10 mil—
lion persons, were dependent on some form of relief.
The urban relief families were still more numerous——
4 million.

Since 1935 rural relief needs have declined but
not as rapidly or as consistently as had been hoped.
New masses of rural population were brought on the
relief rolls by the drought of 1936 and the far—
reaching effects of the business recession of 1937.
Altogether, at one time or another from 1931 through
1937, 3% million rural families have received des-
perately needed assistance. That means more than
one out of every four rural families.

What has happened to our agricultural popula-

tion?
3

Many things have happened, some of which
started long before 1929—droughts, crop failures,
price collapses, foreclosures, tenancy troubles, soil
exhaustion, among others. Our farmers have had
their own particular defeats and disasters in addition
to bearing their share of the universal privations of
the industrial depression.

Their special resource the land itself as a
means of family subsistence—has been lost by a
large part of the rural population. Great numbers
of landless farm hands are as economically helpless
as city factory hands; farm hands, like factory hands,
are increasingly displaced by laborsaving machinery.

Today the self-sufﬁciency of our farmers amounts
to this: They are not actually on relief to the same
extent as our city workers. And the costs of rural
relief are proportionately as well as quantitatively
less than those of urban relief. Yet, over the 7—year
period from 1931 through 1937 the cost of rural
relief totaled 3% billion dollars. This total takes no
account of special loans and beneﬁts for agriculture
which operated both to help keep farm families off
relief and to reduce the need of those who were forced
to apply for public assistance.

Three and a half billion dollars is a large sum.
But the alarming thing is the fact that numbers of
new rural families come on the relief rolls every year
as others go off. Before these new families are forced
to apply for aid they have gone through a long period
of struggle that has ended in defeat—the total ex-
haustion of their resources. There are evidently
causes that are creating rural poverty and misery
almost as fast as it is capable of being relieved.

Much data—human facts as well as statistical
ﬁgures—have been gathered by the Works Progress

Administration and other Federal agencies that have
administered rural relief during the last 6 years, and
a good deal of study has been given to this material.
We know not only what kinds of farm and village
people come on relief, but why they are obliged to
apply for assistance. We know that rural misery
is not merely a depression situation, but the result
of long-existent destructive forces in rural life that
had already become acute before the national depres-
sion set in. These rural ills were, indeed, contribu—
tory factors in bringing about the Nation-wide
depression.

Some of the work that is being done in connec—
tion with rural relief is of a reconstructive kind, but
most of it is necessarily restricted to meeting the
emergency of human needs as they become acute.
These rural ills, if only palliated but left uncured,
may be contributory to future depressions on a na—
tional scale, which in turn will suddenly produce
widespread rural misery.

Yet these rural ills can be cured. Emergency
expenditures for rural relief should be accompanied by
a fundamental and statesmanlike attack on the causes
of rural poverty.

Not all rural poverty is agricultural in origin.
The rural population, by census deﬁnition, includes
persons in towns or villages with less than 2,500
inhabitants. These small towns and villages, to—
gether with scattered nonfarming families in the open
country, account for more than half of all rural relief
cases. Some of these small towns and villages have
grown up about a mine or other industry, and their
unemployment has industrial causes. But many are
the local centers of farming regions, and their unem-
ployment is the result of agricultural distress.

THE FARMER'S LONG DEPRESSION

The old-time independence of the American
farmer was not destroyed at a single blow. Back of
the great depression there is a long record of agricul—
tural unrest, reﬂected in farmers’ political organiza—
tions and agitation for legislative relief during the
period of industrial prosperity before 1929. The
proportion of our population engaged in agriculture
has been decreasing over the years, but the propor-
tion of our national income going to agriculture has
decreased much more rapidly. In 1909 as much as
35 percent of our “gainfully employed population”
was dependent on agriculture; and that 35 percent
received 19 percent of the national income. In 1930,
21 percent was dependent on agriculture and received
only 9 percent of the national income.

In those two decades there was an increasing
shift to cash-crop farming. This meant that the
farmer raised less food for his family and less feed
for his livestock and that his whole standard of living
was increasingly dependent on the current market
prices for his cash crops. At the same time tractors
and gasoline were beginning to take the place of
horses and oats. This mechanization of farming has
steadily continued, and there are now more than a
million and a quarter tractors in use on American
farms.

There has been a corresponding increase in efﬁ—
ciency. From 1870 to 1930 the output of the average
worker in agriculture increased two and a half times.
This increased efﬁciency has made it necessary for
more young people to leave the farms and go to town
to make a living. But all farming was not mecha—
nized, and it was hard for the family farm to compete

with large-scale mechanized farms. In order to pay
for new equipment and other needed improvements,
more and more farmers mortgaged their homesteads.
From 1910 to 1928 the farm—mortgage debt increased
threefold, reaching a total of 9% billion dollars.
Thus—loaded with debts, obliged to make increasing
outlays to keep up with the standard of agricultural
efﬁciency, and without crops to fall back on for
family consumption—the American farmer was ex-
posed to the full impact of unfavorable changes in
market prices. The new farming system had in fact
put him, along with the urban industrialist, at the
mercy of economic forces, including credit and
ﬁnance, over which he had practically no control.
And the farm laborer and farm tenant alike were
correspondingly put into the situation of the indus—
trial worker, who is likely to be laid off in hard times.
Fewer than one-third of all farm families oper-
ated large—scale units. Of the remaining two—thirds
many were tenants or laborers on large-scale hold-
ings; some were part—time farmers who gained most
of their livelihood from employment off the farm;
and still others were so—called “subsistence farmers,”
consuming at home more than half of their products.
These small farming units supported more than
half of all farm families, but they provided only a
small part of the agricultural products that flowed
into market channels. In 1929 almost half of the
farms had less than $1,000 worth of products per
farm, and altogether they contributed less than 11
percent of the value of all marketed farm products.
In some areas—such as the Appalachian High-
lands and the Plains States—increasing population
pressed hard on the limited land resources and caused
the subdivision of farms into units too small for the

adequate support of a family. Also, here and every—
where, the great demand for proﬁts from cash crops
fostered a kind of farming that was ruinous to the
soil. Continuous clean cultivation and harvesting
exposed the surface of the land to the ravages of rains,
and much of our basic resource—the soilﬁwas washed
off into the streams and carried to the sea, seriously
depleting wide areas and utterly destroying the
fertility of other areas.

American agriculture was expanded abnormally
to meet the abnormally great demands of warring
Europe for grain. After the war not only did this
abnormal demand come to an end, but improved
agricultural efﬁciency everywhere cut down severely
the former normal export market for American farm
products. There was a world—wide surplus of grains
and a collapse of world prices. With American agri—
culture geared to peak production, the export market
practically ceased to exist. Shrinkage in domestic
purchasing power provided the ﬁnal push that car—
ried American agriculture over the precipice.

POPULATION PRESSURE

These world events hastened and intensiﬁed the
agricultural depression in America. But there are
other forces that have operated recently to the dis-
advantage of rural life. Chief among these has been
the pressure of population on the resources of certain
areas.

Up to the early twenties, when immigration was
cut off, Europe was a principal source of man power
for our growing industries and expanding agriculture.
Recently it is the farms that have been the source of
new labor. The city birth rate is hardly high enough

to maintain city population, but the farms have sup-
plied population sufﬁcient to meet the labor needs of
both country and city.

The farm rate of population increase has been
much more rapid in the poorer than in the more
prosperous areas. It is the Cotton South, the Appa-
lachian—Ozark Mountains, the Lake States Cut-Over
Region, and the Plains States that have contributed
most heavily to the supply of new man power, much
more so than the more prosperous New England,
Middle Atlantic, and Midwest areas.

The resultant population movement from the
farms, and especially from the poorer farms, to the
areas of industrial opportunity was abruptly blocked
by the depression of the early thirties. From 1920
to 1930 the net farm—to-city movement was about
600,000 persons a year. From 1930 to 1935 it
was only about 120,000 a year. There were not
enough jobs in the cities for the workers already
there. Ambitious young people who went to the
city to look for work came back defeated, and others
never left the farm. There were many, too, who had
gone to the city before but now came home because
they had lost their jobs.

The farms are not able to provide jobs for these
additional workers. Many older farm workers are
out of jobs because of the mechanization of agricul-
ture. The industries of rural Villages are equally
unable to provide jobs for the young people whose
path to the cities has been blocked by the depression.
Some of these unemployed workers from the farms
and villages become migratory laborers, as do the
farm workers driven out by droughts. Others stay
on the farms and in the villages and are only partially
employed.

UNEQUAL OPPORTUNITY

Population increase in rural low—income areas
has meant a general lack of opportunity. Those
future American citizens who are reared on farms
and in villages have less chance to get an education,
and far less public provision for their health and
welfare, than those who are brought up in cities.

The agricultural States have more children to
bring up and less money to spend in bringing up
children than the industrial States. On the farms
of South Carolina, in 1930, each 100 persons in the
productive age class (15 to 65) had to support 78
children under 15 years of age. In urban California
there were only 30 children under 15 years of age to
each 100 persons in the productive age class; and in
urban Michigan there were only 41 children per 100
older people. The agricultural States are those with
the lowest incomes per person. They have to pro-
vide public education and health facilities as best
they can for a disproportionately large number of
children out of a disproportionately small income.
Try as they may, these States are not able to give
their young people equal opportunities with those of
other States.

This should be a matter of concern to the indus-
trial States, which will sooner or later be in need of
the young workers from the agricultural States. Of
the workers they get, a great many will be poorly
educated. It will be difﬁcult for industry to use such
workers in any but the simplest tasks.

THE FLIGHT OF RURAL YOUTH

The plight of rural youth is one of serious import
for the future and full of grave perplexities for the

present. It is a tragic fact that more young people
than ever before in the Nation’s history should be
coming to maturity in these years of great unemploy-
ment. Many of them have never held a paying job
that was not ﬁnanced by Federal funds. Nothing
short of a very great expansion in private employ-
ment can offer any hope of regular industrial or agri—
cultural work for great numbers of them.

A survey of rural families on relief showed that
of the boys and girls with any kind of job experience
80 percent had done only unskilled work. Most of
the girls had been domestic servants. This is a
measure not only of their actual job opportunities
but also of their previous educational opportunities,
including opportunities for vocational training.

The one favorable effect of the depression upon
youth has been to prolong school attendance. In spite
of restricted budgets, rural schools have shown record
enrollments. But, unfortunately, it is in the rural
areas where there is the greatest surplus of youth
that there exists the greatest lack of high schools.

Rural youth get less schooling than urban youth,
farm youth less than village youth, and rural youth
on relief the least schooling of all. As late as 1930
the United States Census showed that 1 out of every
20 farm youth was unable even to read and write.
Boys on the farm generally get less education than
girls. Facilities are now improving, but youth on
farms when in search of education have serious diﬁ’i-
culties in meeting the problems of distance and trans-
portation.

Many of these young people will ﬁnally seek
their livelihood in towns and cities. But special
vocational training, when any at all is available, is
limited to agriculture and home economics.

In the joblessness of rural youth there are
dangers of two kinds. Prolonged lack of jobs and
wages in the period of young manhood and young
womanhood means an unnatural delay in adjustment
both to their life’s work and to marriage. For youth
there is no adequate substitute for a job. Employ-
ment is indispensable for self—respect and for orderly
habits as well as for self-support, and Without it
youth’s morale and character are likely to deteriorate.

Besides this danger to rural youth in its jobless-
ness, there is another danger to our national economy.
In areas, such as the South, where population pressure
is severe, industrial wages tend to remain low because
farm boys need jobs so badly.

In time, we are assured by statisticians, the
slackening rate of the general population increase will
tend to reduce the pressure in overpopulated rural
areas. Reviving industry, we hope, will provide
more jobs for rural youth. But for the next two
decades there will be a large farm population that
will even in normal times be living in a state of
dangerous insecurity and will in times of depression
inevitably become a charge on public funds. Against
this prospect there stands only the possibility of a
widespread adoption by this insecure group of
methods of farming which Will both increase the
production of marketable crops and raise the standard
of food growing for home use.

DISADVANTAGED FARM CLASSES

As farm ownership becomes increasingly difﬁcult,
the mass of landless agricultural workers grows
larger. The plantations of the South have their
multitude of laborers; the large—scale farms of the

Southwest, the beet farms of the mountain area, and
also, to some extent, the wheat ﬁelds depend '
heavily on migratory labor in planting and harvest—
ing; While wide areas of both the Cotton South
and the Midwest operate through a tenant class.

There were 2,700,000 agricultural wage workers
in 1930. Farm hands used to be young men of the
same social class as the farm owners, and their farm
jobs represented a step up the ladder toward farm
ownership. Now it has become increasingly difﬁcult
for them to climb up the ladder; many of them must
remain farm laborers all their lives. In 1934 the
whole yearly earnings of the average laborer on a
cotton plantation were $180 and house—occupancy.
The earnings of migratory—casual laborers on farms,
after deducting expenses of traveling from job to
job, amounted to $124 for the whole year. Most of
these workers are the heads of families.

Farm tenancy has been increasing rapidly in the
last 20 years. More than 3 million farmers—over
two—ﬁfths of the total—did not in 1930 own the land
they farmed. Some of these were relatives of the
owner and could look forward to farm ownership.
Others owned their animals and tools and were able
to pay cash rent for the land they farmed. But
nearly a million and three quarters of them—more
than half of all farm tenants—were share croppers,
economically helpless and dependent.

Share tenants in the South were formerly chieﬂy
Negroes. But in recent years share tenancy has
increased faster among whites than among Negroes,
and white share tenants are now in the majority.

The share tenancy system concentrates on cash
crops, and the tenant’s share is far from adequate for
his family’s living. There is little subsistence garden—

ing to fall back on for home consumption, and the
family diet is usually deﬁcient. The tenants are
constantly a year behind in their ﬁnances, and they
have to pay excessively high rates of interest for their
credit advances. They constitute a group as eco—
nomically insecure as the agricultural laborers, and
both classes come very extensively on relief.
Finally, there is a fair—sized group of part-time
farmers. Many of them have never made their
entire living from farming. It is for them a side line,
and they get most of their money income from
industry. One-sixth of all farm families—those in
which the farmer has 50 days or more of work each
year away from the farm—can be classiﬁed as part-
time farming families, dependent for cash on employ-
ment in mines, in lumbering, and in near-by industrial
towns. Few of them realized how insecure their
position was until these industries shut down. Yet,
they would have been in a far worse position without
their farm houses and the part of their living that
they could get from their farm gardens. It has often
been impossible for them to extend their farming oper—
ations so as to produce for the market. Part—time
farming offers hope of a degree of security under favor-
able conditions, but a certain minimum of outside
employment for wages is necessary to its success.

FARMERS ON RELIEF

Owners, tenants, part-time farmers, laborers,
villagers—all these different classes in the rural
population suﬁered from the depression, but in
varying degrees.

The farm owners were the best situated for pro—
longed endurance of depression conditions. At the

time when the largest number of rural people were
obliged to ask for Federal assistance, only 1 farm
owner out of every 17 was on the relief rolls. The
numbers of farm owners on rural relief were lowest
of all in the prosperous Corn Belt and in the Hay and
Dairy Area. Owners were on relief in the greatest
proportion—1 out of every 5—in the Lake States
Cut-Over Area.

Comparison of farmers in the same neighbor-
hood helps to explain why many were on relief.
They had small farms, sometimes less than one—third
of the average acreage in their neighborhood; and
they also lacked adequate livestock and farm equip-
ment. In some instances they were part—time
farmers who had lost their supplementary industrial
employment. In other instances they were too
heavily loaded with debt.

The landless farmers were much less able to
meet the depression. One out of every seven tenants
was on relief in February 1935; and it is estimated
that, at one time or another during recent years,
more than one-fourth of all the country’s farm
tenants have had to be given public assistance. In
the drought-stricken Dakotas, over half of the
tenant farmers were on relief at one time. They
had poor land, small holdings, little livestock, and
worn-out farm machinery; crop failures and low
market prices had run them into debt and they had
lost to their creditors what livestock and equipment
they possessed.

One of the great differences between self-
supporting tenants and those on relief was in the
extent of their education. Those with as much as a
grade-school education weathered the depression
much better than their semi-illiterate neighbors.

But in every instance it was the tenants with the
larger and better equipped farms who ﬁrst managed
to get themselves off relief and back to self—support.

Of the share tenants more than 1 out of 12 were
on relief in the peak month; and the proportion
would have been higher had it not been for the aid
this group was getting through rural rehabilitation
loans. In the South, where share tenancy is most
extensive, about twice as many share croppers as
other tenants were on relief. Many share croppers
already had such low standards of living that their
condition was little changed by the depression. And
of all farming groups the share croppers had the great—
est insecurity in retaining their connection with farm—
ing. Almost half of the share croppers on relief were
entirely without work of any kind. The amount of
relief granted to croppers was very small, usually
about $9 a month for a family. This reflects the low
level of living standards in the rural South, and in
the Cotton Kingdom in particular.

What proportion of all farm-labor families was
on relief cannot be determined accurately, but it
was high. About 150,000 such families were depend-
ent on Federal support in June 1935, and more than
275,000 had been on relief in the previous midwin—
ter. Most farm laborers had no experience in any
other kind of work. They had little or no savings.
Within 3 months, on the average, after the loss of a
job, they had to go on relief. Tenants, in compari-
son, could maintain themselves for 7 months and
farm owners for 13 months after losing their farms.

VILLAGE PROBLEMS

In the Winter of 1934—35 there were on relief 1
million heads of rural families who had held nonagri—

(1“.

cultural jobs or had had no previous wage-work ex—
perience. In June 1935 one in every eight village
families was dependent on Federal relief funds. Con-
ditions varied greatly from one region to another.
In the Hay and Dairy Area only 1 out of 13 village
families was on relief; in the Lake States Cut—Over
Area the rate was 1 in every 4; and in the drought—
stricken Dakotas the rate was 1 village family on
relief out of every 5.

Family distress in different kinds of villages has
different origins. Some villages are little commercial
service centers for agricultural hinterlands, and their
fortunes rise and fall with those of the farm people.
When farmers cannot buy, these agricultural villages
stagnate and many workers lose their jobs.

But the workers in other rural villages and small
tOWns are dependent not on farmer buying-power
but on employment in the local branch of some in-
dustry, such as mining, textiles, or lumbering. Their
economic future and that of the Villages depend on
whether the local industries can revive. Some of
these towns and Villages may be expected to thrive,
together with their basic industries; others are
doomed to become stranded.

The prospects of lumbering villages appear to
be among the most hopeless. When the timber is
cut, their means of livelihood is gone, and the work—
ers must either follow the sawmill or go back to
unproductive farming on cut—over land.

The prospects of many small mining towns are
not much better. The industry now tends to con-
centrate on the better mines in the more accessible
areas. The number of bituminous coal mines in
operation decreased from 8,300 to 5,600 between
1919 and 1929. But the miner cannot follow the job,

for increased mechanical efﬁciency of operations
requires fewer miners; there was a decrease of 100,000
bituminous coal miners during the 1919—1929 period.
The severest reductions in employment were in the
small mines scattered around the borders of the main
coal regions. All through the coal regions of the
Appalachians can be seen grimy, decaying villages
where the miners will probably never again have a
chance to get work in mining.

Similar conditions are to be found in some of the
iron mining villages. And the shift of the textile

industry to the South has left stranded village popu—
lations in New England.

Two-ﬁfths of all village people on relief have
been unskilled industrial workers. One—fourth re-
ported agricultural experience. Another ﬁfth com-
prised skilled and semiskilled workers. There were
few white—collar workers on village relief. In a large
number of cases—17 percent—a woman was the head
of the household on relief. Aged persons were also
numerous. And many village families were on relief
because they contained no person capable at the
time of holding a job.

PROBLEM AREAS

Different areas have shown rural distress to an
unequal extent. The Corn Belt and the Hay and
Dairy Area had the smallest proportions of rural
people on relief.

When the rural counties with the highest relief
loads were plotted on a map, they fell into certain
type-of—farming areas. The highest relief ﬁgures
were found in the Lake States Cut-Over Area, the
Appalachian-Ozark Area, and the Eastern and

Western Cotton Areas. The Great Plains Area was
added by the droughts of 1934 and 1936. These
problem areas are chieﬂy areas of chronic distress,
of stabilized poverty.

In the cut-over counties around the Great Lakes
many farmers could formerly depend on lumbering
or mining for part-time employment and have never
been able to make a living without a supplementary
cash wage. Other farmers, coming in, found too
late that the cut—over lands are unsuited to proﬁtable
farming.

The Ozarks and the Appalachians were recog-
nized as problem areas long before the depression.
Here, after forests were cut over and unproﬁtable
mines were abandoned, the hillsides were cleared for
farming, and the result has been ruinous erosion of
the soil. The land is inadequate to support the
rapidly increasing farm population. “It is difﬁcult,”
says a recent report on the Appalachians, “to see how
under any program of rehabilitation or reemploy—
ment all the man power of this area can be absorbed
in any industrial or agricultural employment possible
at the moment.”

In the South the one-crop system, without rota—
tion, and the lack of livestock have meant that the
fertility of the soil could be renewed only by use of
expensive commercial fertilizer in ever-increasing
quantities. Twelve Southeastern States are respon-
sible for three—ﬁfths of all our fertilizer costs, which
in 1929 amounted to over 271 million dollars. This
region—that of the Old South—is our largest chronic
problem area of rural poverty.

These are the large sore spots. Other smaller
problem areas are to be found where distress is as
intense but not as Widespread.

DROUGHT DISTRESS

General agricultural recovery was sharply in-
terrupted by a series of droughts in the Great Plains
States. Recent drought conditions made their ap-
pearance as early as 1930 and reached their cumula—
tive climax in the summers of 1934 and 1936, when
large parts of 10 States were drought—stricken.

Drought has been a constant danger and a recur—
rent ainction ever since the days of earliest settle-
ment on the Plains. Wherever pioneer farmers
pushed beyond the irregular line of 20—inch annual
rainfall, they were invading the danger zone. And,
as we now realize, the plowing up of grazing land to
increase wheat production in times of high prices
greatly increased the danger.

The population of the area has adjusted itself to
drought conditions by moving out in recurrent dry
periods; other farmers have moved in as soon as good
rains have offered better prospects. Many of those
who left the area have moved West, where they swell
the army of “fruit tramps” and “pea pickers” who
man California’s great farms in the harvest season.
Since 1934 this population movement outward from
the area has been partially checked by the provision
of Federal aid.

The drought damage of 1934 and 1936 was added
to depression distress, and for the last 4 years a very
large proportion of the people in the area has had
to depend on public assistance. There are two main
areas of drought damage. The northern area centers
in the Dakotas, eastern Montana, northeastern
Wyoming, and west central Minnesota. This covers
the Spring Wheat Area and contains some ranching
and mixed agricultural sections. The southern

area, centering in the adjacent corners of Kansas,
Oklahoma, Colorado, Texas, and New Mexico,
comprises the so-called “Dust Bowl.” The northern
and southern areas have wide differences in soil,
climate, topography, and type of farming, but they
are alike in deﬁciency of rainfall. These two parched
regions include nearly one-tenth of the Nation’s
land area.

‘When the droughts came, crops failed and the
wind blew the topsoil off the farms. Debts came due,
local banks closed, the personal credit of able farmers
vanished, and the tax resources of local governments
were soon exhausted in attempting to meet relief
needs.

This started earlier than most people realize.
Two weeks after the Federal Emergency Relief
Administration was set up in 1933, the ﬁrst peti