THE IMPACT OF WAR 



in 1922, with 367 for the country as a whole, and the highest in 1926, when 

 there were no fewer than 976 suspensions, mostly in the small towns and 

 country districts. Aid from the Federal Reserve Banks and other credit 

 sources enabled many bankers to delay the final reckoning for a time, but 

 in an alarmingly large number of cases the collapse could only be post- 

 poned. As a result of these failures, many farmers who had resisted the 

 temptation to make speculative land purchases suffered along with the 

 culpable. Some of them lost all of their savings; when they had owned 

 bank stock, they were also subject to heavy assessments that became a lien 

 on their property. Indeed, the general demoralization that inevitably ac- 

 companies a series of bank failures left almost no individual in all the 

 Middle West untouched. In the place of the boom psychology that had 

 accompanied and succeeded the war, the whole agricultural population 

 suffered from an atmosphere surcharged with gloom. 3 ' 



The gradual loss of the European wartime markets contributed heavily 

 to this state of mind. Predictions had been common during the war that 

 the food demands of Europe on American producers in the postwar period 

 would greatly exceed the volume of the prewar years. Perhaps the general 

 currency of this idea served to stimulate European production; in any 

 event, European crop yields, at least outside Russia, mounted rapidly 

 after the war came to an end. All the land was still there, even if some 

 of it had been fought over, and its fertility was undiminished. After 

 demobilization there was no longer a labor shortage. With a few simple 

 tools and the will to work, European farmers were soon able to bring the 

 land into full production again. The huge wartime purchases by Euro- 

 pean governments, paid for with money lent by the United States, were 

 speedily discontinued, and normal trade routes, such as had previously 

 brought so much Argentine beef to Europe, were as speedily resumed. 

 During the war the United Kingdom had imported 50 per cent of its 

 fresh beef from the United States; by 1923 imports from America had 

 fallen to about 5 per cent. Wheat from Canada, the Argentine, and Aus- 

 tralia was available for European purchase in ever increasing volume and 

 at discouragingly low prices. European consumers during the war had 



37. William Howard Steiner, Money and Banking (New York, 1933), pp. 275, 

 283; Fred L. Garlock, "Bank Failures in Iowa," Journal of Land and Public Vtility 

 Economics, II (lanuary, 1926), pp. 48-66. 



