Focusing on the Great Plains states of Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota between 1929 and 1945, Down and Out on the Family Farm examines small family farmers and the Rural Rehabilitation Program designed to help them. Historian Michael Johnston Grant reveals the tension between economic forces that favored large-scale agriculture and political pressure that championed family farms, and the results of that clash.
The Great Depression and the drought of the 1930s lay bare the long-term economic instability of the rural Plains. The New Deal introduced the Rural Rehabilitation Program to assist lower- to middle-income farmers throughout the country. This program combined low-interest loans with managerial advice. However, these efforts were not enough to compete with the growing scale of agriculture or to counter the recurring drought of the era. Regional conservatism, environmental factors, and fiscal constraints limited the federal aid offered to thousands of families.
Grant provides extensive primary source research from government documents, as well as letters, newspaper editorials, and case studies that focus on individual lives and fortunes. He examines who these families were and what their farms looked like, and he sheds light on the health problems and other personal concerns that interfered with the economic viability of many farms. The result is a provocative study that gives a human face to the hardships and triumphs of modern agriculture.
"This book provides an excellent assessment. . . . [M]eticulously researched."—Choice
"This is a well-researched and carefully argued case study of New Deal efforts to come to terms with rural poverty. Grant suggests the formidable obstacles rural rehabilitation faced, and in doing so he provides an excellent contribution to the literature on rural America in the 1930s."—David E. Hamilton, American Historical Review
"Grant's description of the New Deal programs and their work in the Plains States is wide ranging, providing thumbnail sketches of key policy figures, the reactions of agricultural organizations and members of Congress to the programs as well as opinion in the general public. He is evenhanded in discussion of the programs, noting their limitations, shifting goals and ideological inconsistencies but crediting them with successfully assisting many deserving farmers. He enlivens the narrative with numerous references to specific farmers and their wives and quotations from farmer letters or recollections. Grant's book is an excellent overview of an important aspect of New Deal agricultural policy."—Allan Bogue, EH.Net (Economic History Services)
"Grant's study details the work of rural rehabilitation on the Great Plains at the local level . . . But the work is much more than a community-based monograph. He also puts the history of rural rehabilitation within the larger political history of the New Deal. . . . He asks how so many farmsteads could have been lost in a mere half century—the same half century in which the federal government has spent millions of dollars each year in agricultural supports."—Catherine McNicol Stock, Journal of American History
"Down and Out on the Family Farm provides a fine overview of Plains economic issues and of the conflicts that arose between regional values and federal programs. There are no demons here, just a complex mixture if aspiring farmers, government, drought, and hard times. For those interested in knowing more about today's Plains farm crisis, this book is an excellent introduction."—Paula M. Nelson, Great Plains Quarterly
"The writing is excellent, and the arguments are clearly stated and carefully reasoned. There are masterful discussions of the politics and culture of Great Plains farmers and of the complex programs and interrelationships that emerged from the bewildering array of government programs initiated during the New Deal."—Michael W. Schuyler, The Annals of Iowa
"This well-organized, meticulously researched book to be a welcome addition to the ever-expanding body of work on the Great Depression and the New Deal in this region. Grant has complied an impressive study of the effect of rural rehabilitation in the Great Plains. He has taken vast amounts of data and information and crafted a well-written, engaging work that will certainly be an asset to students of the period."—Vikki Morek Dennis, North Dakota Quarterly
"Thorough, well-researched, and careful in its conclusions."—Nebraska Life
"Grant has prepared a scholarly and thorough analysis of the Rsettlemnet Administration and its successor, the Farm Security Adminstration. His work provides significant ingishts into New Deal farm policy."—Lynwood Oyos, South Dakota History
“This is a wise and important book by an author with experience in both farming and in scholarship, and who consequently has an excellent eye for the practical stakes of agricultural change during the Great Depression.”—Craig Miner, American Studies