Letters to America by Tom Blair

Author:Tom Blair
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2015-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

Emilie

John

The Great Depression was the largest and deepest depression in American history, spanning the period of 1929 to 1939. Over 25 percent of the population seeking work were unemployed. Banks failed, savings evaporated, property foreclosed, and in city after city soup lines stretched for blocks.

No group was harder hit by the Depression than farmers and farm workers. During the first three years of the Depression, farm income fell by a staggering two-thirds. A bushel of wheat that sold for $2.94 before the Depression sold for 30 cents in 1932. Of the farmers, the sharecroppers of the South were particularly fragile and quickly felt the pain of the Depression; their very existence was tenuous even before the Depression.

After the Civil War the bulk of the Southern farm land was owned by a relatively few rich men; rich white men. In the 1870s newly freed slaves and poor whites accepted the sharecropper system. The way of life of most sharecroppers was inferior to that of many people in medieval Europe. Housing consisted of primitive log cabins or clapboard one-room houses. Few homes had glass windows or screens. Indoor plumbing was nonexistent; water was provided from open wells or nearby springs and creeks, and bathrooms were outdoor privies located a few yards behind the hovel that was home.

By the time of the Great Depression sharecroppers represented 65 percent of all Alabama farming. By 1940 it was estimated the average sharecropper family income was less than 65 cents a day. From this amount they had to pay the land owner for the meager sundries he had provided during the year.

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