The Great Depression was a time of economic destress in the United States that eventually affected the whole world. The stock market crashed causing chaos among the people. Everywhere people were going to banks demanding they get their money back. However, these banks were not prepared for this and did not have the money to give back. As banks began to fail, business failed as well. The number of unemployed people rose steadily and homeless loitered the streets. Most families could not even put meals on the table. However, the group of people that were hit the hardest by this depression were the American farmers. They struggled to make money selling their crops, were faced with the Dust Bowl, and became bankrupt and kicked off of their farms. …show more content…
The number of crops that were grown increased each month, yet farmers still struggled. Prices for crops continued to raise and people could no not afford to buy food. After a season of crops is grown, it is important to give the soil time to rest and have the nutrients restored. However, because farmers needed to grow so many crops to earn the little money they did, there was not time to give the land a break. Each year the soil grew worse. A drought was brought upon in California along with dry, hot winds. The winds grew increasingly strong and started what is known as the Dust Bowl in 1930. Crops were ruined and it was almost impossible to grow new ones because of how dry the soil was. The Dust Bowl created a huge burden to all farmers everywhere. Dealing with the banks and loans also contributed to the problems the farmers had to face. New machinery was invented to help improve farming. It made things much faster and easier than using manual labor. Manual labor was no longer practical because of the need to produce mass amounts of crops, so farmers began using this new technology. However, these machines were expensive, and the American farmers could not afford them. To solve this problem, they began taking loans out of the bank. This caused a new problem when the farmers could not pay back these loans and became bankrupt. The banks kicked farmers off of their land and forced onto the