226 ChaPter^4
AAA disproportionately favored large farm owners [and much of the land
was owned by out-of-state, and often eastern, bankers] and those who sup-
ported the Democratic Party. The AAA attempted to raise crop prices back
to pre-Great War levels by eliminating surplus crop production and, as we
have noted, provided subsidies to not grow crops and paid farmers to take
land out of production, which ended up harming tenant farmers and share-
croppers mostly.
The goal of federal Dust Bowl relief was to help farm families once again
produce for themselves, as they had been before the dust came, and not rely
on long-term government aid. In a 1935 interview, Harry Hopkins, the WPA
director, explained that the government’s goal was “to get these farm families
off the relief rolls by enabling them to become self-sustaining.” And there
were plenty of families to help in the 142 counties that were declared drought
emergency areas. An early relief plan called the Land Utilization Program
attempted to provide suffering farmers with the tools necessary to recover
from the drought. According to Hopkins, the program would purchase sub-
marginal [poor] land from farm families as a component of rural rehabilita-
tion. The administrators of the Land Utilization Program concentrated efforts
in areas with the highest relief loads (the Cotton South, the Appalachian
South, and the northern and southern plains). The $25 million program had
three essential elements. First, it was to make available seed, farm animals,
and equipment—which seemed a bit counterintuitive when considering that
the AAA was still removing hundreds of thousands of sick animals from the
drought zones. Second, the government provided trained specialists in agri-
cultural and home economics to teach farmers how to properly work the
ground and to provide their wives with lessons in thrift. Finally, representa-
tives from the program would work with each drought family to develop a
customized financial plan to maintain a decent standard of living. Again, this
was certainly not a case of direct government handouts; it was not a dole. It
was a lesson in home economics that placed the burden of surviving the dust
bowl on individual families rather than the federal government. The Land
Utilization Program also diminished the seriousness of the drought and
depression by suggesting that wives should just become more frugal or hus-
bands should simply plant their crops more carefully But, notes prominent
Dust Bowl historian Donald Worster, “It was here the government entered
more completely into a family’s life and, unavoidably, marked them as not