After WW I, and after 1929, the American farmer was in trouble. Exports had decreased after the war, and during the depression, people were actually hungry, and weren’t buying as much food as they had before the crash and massive job layoffs. FDR ran on a “farm” program, promising to help the farmers. He did, but it made everyone hungrier, didn’t help the farmers, prolonged the depression, and set more big government in motion, which of course hasn’t decreased one little bit.
The “Agricultural Adjustment Act,” was an ’emergency’ measure, designed to help farmers, but it quickly became a permanent measure. What did it do? Hurt everyone, and made government ever bigger. By the time the Act became law, crops had already been planted. The New Dealers wanted to force farm prices up to help farmers buy limiting supply, but the crops were in the ground. What to do? Cotton farmers were paid $100 million to plow under 10 million acres of cotton cropland. Since much of America’s cotton crop was exported, the obvious thing happened. European farmers increased their cotton plantings, higher cotton prices in the US decreased cotton consumption, and cotton farmers were in trouble. They had higher prices, but no sales.
12,000 acres of tobacco were plowed under, and California peaches were allowed to rot on the ground. Historian John T. Flynn wrote, “We had men burning oats when we were importing oats from abroad on a huge scale, killing pigs while increasing our imports of lard, cutting corn production and importing 30 million bushels of corn from abroad. While the Act was paying out hundreds of millions to kill millions of hogs, burn oats, plow under cotton, the Department of Agriculture issued a bulletin telling the nation that the problem of our time was our failure to produce enough food to provide the people with a mere subsistence diet.”
On it went, year after year, bungle after bungle, misstep after stumble, and always more and more laws, “fixes,” and attempts to solve everything by government power. Things got worse as each year passed, and the depression, which would have worked its way out by itself with no government meddling, finally got so disastrous that FDR got us into WW II, which solved the depression problem. My Dad bought a 40 acre retirement farm in Southern Maryland in 1948. It was tobacco country, and the cigarette cancer scare didn’t appear till 1965. The FDR ’allotments’ were still in full effect, and farmers could only plant as much as the government allowed them to plant. Their tobacco crops were measured by bureaucrats, to be sure they weren’t planting more than they were allowed to plant. If they made a mistake, they were fined. Tobacco farming was very educational hard work, and I remember it well. ’Topping,’ ’cutting,’ ’hanging,’ and ’stripping’ tobacco, even though it was a neighbor’s crop, is still a vivid memory. Riding on top of the crop in the back of Hance’s 1946 Chevy truck on the way to the markets in Upper Marlboro, smelling the tobacco and watching the auctioning of it is unforgettable. We all have great childhood memories, I hope. At least I do!
I truly believe that Newt Gingrich is one of America’s most intelligent men, and I have great admiration for him. Still, Newt, plus millions of others really and truly do believe that FDR was a great man, and was responsible getting America out of the great depression. They are totally wrong. FDR actually increased the severity of it and prolonged it, besides placing government bureaucracies on line, which still thwart freedom, production, efficiency, and happiness of the American citizenry, These bureaucracies, taxes, and the throttling of freedoms began the decay of America. This includes Social Security, which I will examine Monday. Have a great weekend!