baikie wrote:
"The Great Depression *began* with stock market crash in '29. There's a commonly know expression known as the "Roaring 20s"- The '20s are famous for prosperity and a crime wave caused by Prohibition [JFK's dad made his fortune from smuggling]. Prohibition started in 1920 and ended after 1930. The dust bowl didn't start until after 1930.
http://www.ptsi.net/user/museum/dustbowl.html
If you meant the 30's you should have said so. "

Awww, how cute. You didn't do your homework again.

there was a misssive cycle of farm produce price boom-and-bust in the midwest during the 1920's. Produce would pile up in eastern warehouses, causing massive crashes in price-per-bushel. Farmers who had leveraged their land against expectred income to get seed and supplies (which then-as-now farmers REGULARLY do) were loosing their land to the banks when their crops turned out not to be worth anything. The banks thought this was groovy, until the decline in farm economy made that land a worthless asset.

The farm economy would collapse after the bust, and prices would go back up as fewer crops were produced in the following year. Then the whole process would start over again.

Things were not going well for the midwest. The 1929 crash marked the beginning of the official "great depression", especially for manufacturing, mining and trade- but out west the drought that would lead to the great dust bowl of the 1930s was well under way, the rural economy was in shock after a decade of boom-and-bust and alternating years of bad weather, and the banks were snapping up land as fast as they could grab in hopes of acruing assets to leverage in the 'roaring' stock market of the 20's.

While the overall US economy showed improvement druing the 20's, true- but agriculture suffered.

Also, in 1919-1921, the nation had been through a micro-depression... Really a Recession combined with a collapse in farm prices AND moderate deflation- a reduction in consumer costs. This hit the farming industry hard, and the following boom-and-busts of the 1920's. In general, Deflation is devastating for farmers as the value of their land, and their crops decline in conjunction, and if you leveraged you land to the general store or Bank to afford seed corn and supplies for next season, you could end up owing more on your land than it is worth, and your crop is worth less than your seed corn and input into the crop- meaning you CAN'T pay off your debt at the end of the season and the bank owns your land.

So we (okies and kansans and etc) got clobbered at the start of the 1920's, raped over the 20's and just plain busted by the 10 year drought leading up to the dust bowl days and the 'official' depression

You know, there is a REASON we started farm subsidies, mass irrigation, land conservation and price controlls. Many think it was the agricultural turmoil of the 20's that caused both the ultimate collapse of the larger economy AND the soil depletion of the Dust Bowl days. It started as an effort to make sure it didn't happen again.

But if you were not ignorant- you would know all of this.

Please, I hope you reply!

Davin