what caused the price of cotton and tobacco to drop after ww1

Agriculture in Due north Carolina during the Great Low

Originally published equally "Difficult Days on Tar Heel Farms"

by RoAnn Bishop
Reprinted with permission from the Tar Heel Junior Historian. Autumn 2010.
Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History

See besides: History of Agriculture for K-8 Students

"Well somebody told us Wall Street fell
But we were so poor that nosotros couldn't tell.
Cotton was brusque and the weeds were tall
Merely Mr. Roosevelt'due south a gonna save usa all."

—from "Song of the South," written by Bob McDill about the Great Low era and recorded in 1989 past the ring Alabama

Hard times hit Due north Carolina's farmers before the Great Depression of the 1930s even began. In the 1920s, Northward Carolina was even so very much a rural state. One-half of its full population lived on working farms. Agronomics was its largest manufacture. But farmers' income had declined steadily during the decade because of overproduction of cash crops, falling crop prices, rising farm costs, poor conservation practices, and other issues. When the stock marketplace crashed on "Black Tuesday"—October 29, 1929—the hopes and dreams of many farm families crashed along with information technology. "Many of our North Carolina farmers are desperately poor, alive in wretched houses, and are scantily provided with even the necessities of life," a sociologist from the University of Due north Carolina wrote in 1929. Throughout the side by side decade, both state and federal assistance would be needed to ease the plight of agronomics.

The biggest problems for Northward Carolina farmers resulted from growing besides much cotton and tobacco, the country's 2 main cash crops. (Farmers grow a cash crop for sale rather than for personal food or for feeding livestock.) During the 1920s, farmers produced more than buyers needed of these crops, creating a glut on the market. As a outcome, tobacco and cotton prices plummeted. The introduction of new man-made materials such as rayon, women'due south new "flapper" dress styles that required less fabric, and increased competition from foreign textile mills combined to topple "Male monarch Cotton" from its throne in the 1920s. In North Carolina, cotton wool that had sold for more than than 30 cents a pound in 1919 was selling for less than 6 cents in 1931. Past that same year, prices for tobacco—which had surpassed cotton as the country's new "rex" ingather—had dropped to but 9 cents a pound, compared to 86 cents in 1919. Many farmers received less for their crops than information technology cost to produce them. Less income meant farmers could not buy needed farm supplies, or even food and vesture for their families. They relied on banks and merchants for more than and more credit. They sank deeper and deeper into debt.

To add to farmers' woes, constant cultivation of cotton fiber and tobacco had damaged soil, robbing it of nutrients needed for crops to grow well. Likewise, farmers who had tried to earn money past lumbering had stripped the forests of copse. This meant that pelting done deep gullies across the land. Such soil erosion left state unsuitable to grow other crops similar grains and vegetables. Every bit a result, North Carolina had to import some of its food during the 1930s, even though information technology remained a largely rural country with agriculture every bit its economic backbone.

Another problem facing Tar Heel farmers was the downside of farm mechanization, or replacing human and animal labor with machines. Technological advances made during World War I led to mass production of many new labor-saving devices during the 1920s and 1930s. Merely wealthier farmers could buy these new motorized farm implements, like tractors and peanut pickers. Virtually farmers withal plowed backside a mule and did much of their harvesting by paw. All the same, the use of horses and mules equally typhoon animals in the state declined a lot. While new machines made life easier for some farm families (and their animals), they eliminated the jobs of other farmworkers, called sharecroppers and tenant farmers.

Although they owned no state themselves, tenant farmers and sharecroppers felt the effect of farm failures. After the stock market crash, when some farm owners could no longer pay their mortgages or repay loans, banks foreclosed on them. Likewise, local governments seized and sold the holding of farmers who couldn't pay their taxes. When owners lost their farms, tenant farmers, who had rented land and living quarters from the owners, and sharecroppers, who had worked the land for a share of the crop, lost their homes and livelihoods, besides. Many of these people gave up farming altogether. They moved to towns and cities to seek other jobs with more than dependable wages. This migration from rural to urban areas during the 1930s began a trend of declining subcontract population that continues today. The number of farms in the state too began dwindling in the 1930s. The average farm size grew, however, every bit some broke small-scale farmers sold their lands to larger, more prosperous farmers.

Before the Great Depression, during previous periods of agricultural depression, Due north Carolina farmers had tried to meliorate things for themselves past forming organizations to promote and protect their interests. Such groups included the Patrons of Husbandry (whose local chapters were chosen "Granges"), the Farmers' Alliance, and the Farmers Marriage. But all of these organizations ultimately failed. The scale and severity of the Great Depression demanded more assistance than farmers could provide on their own. Agriculture'due south plight required the authorities—at both the land and federal levels—to assist.

In N Carolina, that job initially brutal on the shoulders of Governor O. Max Gardner (1929–1933). In his inaugural address, Gardner pledged to amend agricultural and rural life. Soon after taking office, he introduced the "Live-at-Home" program, which encouraged Tar Heels to grow more food crops for their families and livestock, and less cash crops for auction. Abode demonstration agents working under the direction of Northward Carolina Land College (now North Carolina State Academy) assisted the program by showing women across the state how to can and preserve food. Agricultural extension agents in every county taught farmers the benefits of crop rotation, deeper plowing, amend seed choice, crop diversity, and the correct apply of fertilizer. And the number of agricultural experiment stations, designed to give farmers up-to-appointment data about a variety of subjects, grew speedily. Within 2 years, the amount of land devoted to cotton fiber brutal by 536,000 acres, and corn production increased past 10 million bushels.

When Governor J. C. B. Ehringhaus took function in 1933, the nation was in the depths of the Depression. That same year, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president. Roosevelt quickly sent Congress a serial of bills intended to provide relief, recovery, and reform for Americans. He called his radical economic program the New Deal.

The nigh important New Bargain program for North Carolina was the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). Established past Congress in 1933, this subcontract-recovery endeavour paid farmers to reduce crop yields by leaving some land fallow (unplanted). The idea was that if farmers grew less of certain crops, a shortage would issue. Farmers could then raise prices on those crops and make more than coin. The government placed acreage controls on cotton, tobacco, peanuts, and other crops. The plan worked for a while, and farm prices rose. But the government payments that farmers received, called a "subsidy," came from a tax levied on food-processing industries. In 1936 that tax was alleged unconstitutional, and the government abandoned the AAA program. Half-dozen weeks after, Congress passed a more effective farm-relief act. It authorized the authorities to pay farmers who planted fewer acres of soil-depleting crops, thus achieving the goal of ingather reduction through soil conservation practices. By 1940, nearly 6 million farmers nationwide were receiving federal subsidies under this program.

Another New Deal plan that helped a few financially strapped farmers was resettlement. The Resettlement Administration (RA), created by Congress in 1935, and other federal agencies moved selected farm families to federally planned, rural communities called "resettlement farms." Penderlea Homestead Farms in Pender County and Roanoke Farms in Halifax County were ii such projects in N Carolina. Settlers received land, a home, tools, and livestock for three years. During that fourth dimension, they had to follow strict guidelines and make monthly payments. If they succeeded, they somewhen gained championship to the land and paid the rest of their loan over a 40-year period. "A good name and reputation of the whole family, the power to piece of work and the will to practice it, those are the things that count most hither," said Westward. H. Robbins, Penderlea manager. In 1937 the Farm Security Assistants (FSA) succeeded the Resettlement Administration. With even broader powers, information technology helped the nation's poorest farmers secure depression-interest loans to purchase country; pay for farm equipment, seed, and livestock; and improve their homes. Nonetheless, the FSA lost most of its funding by 1943.

Another New Deal program that helped farmers was the Noncombatant Conservation Corps (CCC). Established in March 1933, the CCC paid single young men $30 a month to piece of work on various conservation projects. By 1936, Northward Carolina had 61 CCC camps housing thousands of young men. Dressed in olive-drab uniforms, they planted trees, built fences, and terraced hillsides to fight soil erosion; reclaimed eroded country; and helped go rid of ingather pests, amid other projects. A pop program, the CCC accomplished many projects of lasting value. The government close it down in 1942, after the nation's entry into Globe War II.

The Rural Electrification Assistants (REA), yet another New Deal agency, greatly aided rural areas. Information technology provided low-involvement loans to farmers' cooperatives to build ability (and later on telephone) lines in places where individual ability companies did non offer service. Established in May 1935, the REA brought electricity to many rural North Carolinians. This immune farm families to savour electrical lights and use many electrical household appliances. It likewise let them use electric devices like water pumps and milking machines that made farmwork easier.

Other New Deal programs aimed at boosting agriculture. The Subcontract Credit Act helped farmers refinance loans at reduced interest rates. In 1935 the federal government established the Soil Conservation Service, which taught farmers how to reduce erosion. Due north Carolina also got involved in soil conservation efforts. The first Soil Conservation Commune in the United States was formed in Anson County in 1937.

New Deal programs had brought nearly $440 million to North Carolina by 1938. Well-nigh of these programs served the state well, rescuing Tar Heels from the degradation of the Depression and enabling numerous farmers to relieve their farms or—in the case of tenant farmers—acquire land of their own. While some New Deal programs ended when the economic system improved, others like the REA and farm production limitations have continued to the nowadays solar day. But none of them successfully ended the Great Depression. Only the nation's industrialization equally it prepared to enter Globe War Two would accomplish that feat.

At the time of this commodity's publication, RoAnn Bishop was the curator of agriculture, industry, and economical life at the North Carolina Museum of History.

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Source: https://www.ncpedia.org/agriculture/great-depression