Question

How did mechanisation of agriculture affect the lives of the poor farmers in the USA?

Answer 1

(i) Many of the farmers bought machines, imagining that wheat prices would remain high and profits would flow in. If they had no money, the banks offered loans. Those who borrowed found in difficult to pay back their debts. Many of them deserted their farms and looked for jobs elsewhere.

(ii) But it was not easy to find jobs. Mechanisation had reduced the need for labour. And the boom of the late $19th$ and early $20thh$ centuries seemed to have come to an end by the $mid-1920s$. After that, most farmers faced trouble. Production to an end so rapidly during the war and post-war years that there was a large surplus.

(iii) Unsold stocks piled up, storehouses overflowed with grain, and vast amounts of corn and wheat were turned into animal feed. Wheat prices fell and export markets collapsed. This created the grounds for the Great Agrarian Depression of the $1930s$ that ruined wheat farmers everywhere.