50 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



products which will enable them to make a profit. Supply and 

 price are both regulated to a great extent by the manufacturer. 



These facts explain a very strange thing which occurred 

 after the World War. As we have seen, the value of farm 

 products sank. But the cost of the machinery and other goods 

 which the farmer needed soared. There was an industrial 

 boom. Factories worked over "time. The more the factories 

 made, the more money the bankers lent to the manufacturers 

 to build more factories to make more goods. 



However, factories must have a market for their products, 

 and one of the biggest markets for manufactured goods is the 

 American farmer. Burdened with debts, high costs, and taxes, 

 he couldn't buy. And when in October, 1929, the factories 

 suddenly found that they had run out of orders, the farmers 

 said, "Maybe now the city people will get the point of what 

 we have been saying for years." By 1932 no one could mistake 

 that point. Industrial. activity of the country had dropped 47 

 per cent below normal. The farmers, who had been going 

 through a long period of decline, found that their income had 

 shrunk 57 per cent in the three years since 1929. 43a 



THE FARMERS STRIKE 



The collapse of industry meant that the farmer was now 

 losing his domestic as well as his foreign market. Like the 

 Massachusetts farmers of Revolutionary days under Captain 

 Daniel Shays, farmers in Iowa, North and South Dakota, 

 Oklahoma, Kansas, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Wiscon' 

 sin, North Carolina, Michigan, Ohio, New York, Tennessee, 

 Nebraska, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Utah, Minnesota, Illinois, 

 in practically every agricultural section in the country, banded 

 themselves together to protect their interests by force, if neces' 

 sary. Many times the farmers adopted a device developed by 

 factory workers. They struck. The purpose of these strikes 



43a Faulkner, op. tit., p. 759. 



