THE BUSINESS OF AMERICA ★^785raised farmers’ incomes and promoted
the purchase of more land on credit.
Thanks to mechanization and the
increased use of fertilizer and insecti-
cides, agricultural production continued
to rise even when government subsidies
ended and world demand stagnated. As
a result, farm incomes declined steadily
and banks foreclosed tens of thousands
of farms whose owners were unable to
meet mortgage payments.
For the first time in the nation’s his-
tory, the number of farms and farmers
declined during the 1920s. For example,
half the farmers in Montana lost their
land to foreclosure between 1921 and
- Extractive industries, like mining
and lumber, also suffered as their products faced a glut on the world market.
During the decade, some 3 million persons migrated out of rural areas. Many
headed for southern California, whose rapidly growing economy needed new
labor. The population of Los Angeles, the West’s leading industrial center, a
producer of oil, automobiles, aircraft, and, of course, Hollywood movies, rose
from 575,000 to 2.2 million during the decade, largely because of an influx of
displaced farmers from the Midwest. Well before the 1930s, rural America was
in an economic depression.
The 1920s, however, was not simply a period of decline on the farm but of
significant technological change. The mechanization of agriculture had been
taking place since the mid- nineteenth century, especially in the West, but it
now accelerated dramatically. New inventions came into widespread use on
the Great Plains, especially the steam tractor and the disk plow, which killed
weeds, chopped up the sod, and left the surface layer much easier to plant.
Mechanization encouraged an increase in the scale of agriculture. From farms
growing wheat to California orange groves, the western states became home
to modern “factory farms,” employing large numbers of migrant laborers. Mas-
sive irrigation projects completed in the previous decades made the Far West
much more suitable for farming. Farm output boomed in previously arid parts
of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. With immigration from Asia
barred and blacks unwanted, agribusinesses recruited workers from across
the southern border, and immigrants from Mexico came to make up the vast
majority of the West’s low- wage farm migrants. On the Great Plains, extensive
plowing while ignoring environmental risks set the stage for the Dust Bowl of
the 1930s.
Kansas agricultural workers breaking new ground
with disk plows, which eased the task of ready-
ing the sod of the Great Plains for planting and
encouraged the emergence of larger farms.
Simon Fishman, a Jewish farmer known as the
“wheat king,” in jacket and tie, is on the first
tractor.Who benefited and who suffered in the new consumer society of the 1920s?