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The perspective of an American farmer in the latter half of the 19th century
Being an American farmer in the late 19th century
The perspective of an American farmer in the latter half of the 19th century
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During the great depression, the midwest underwent a long drought. Exposed dry earth swept away with the wind and caused huge dust storms that prolonged the dry weather. With the lowered selling prices and the lack of crops the farmers had some major economic trouble. In Black Blizzard and John Steinbeck 's Grapes of Wrath, the literature develops the ideas of the poor distribution of wealth within the populations and the social aspects of people of different economic class. Social differences arise in the wealthy, the employed, and the unemployed throughout this period of hardship.
In Debts by Karen Hesse she has a quote that states, “Ma says,”Bay, hasn’t rained enough to grow wheat in Three years.” ” Farmers were not able to grow wheat because the fields could not be turned over. Most farmers were taking loans from the government because they couldn’t afford anymore seed for the farms. Crops were spindling out and dying. After all the crops died farmers were losing money and could not lose anymore money.
This lack of farmers put them in danger when winter came around because they did not know how to farm or gather food like women and farmers did. To their dismay, the Powhatan Indians offered them corn to eat and John
The farmer's husband's futile search for work in ten counties underscored the widespread economic difficulties that plagued farming communities across the country. This firsthand account of deprivation and despair exposes the harsh realities faced by farmers during this era of change, as they grapple with crop failures, economic hardships, and the stark realities of poverty and hunger. The farmer's poignant lament serves as a poignant reminder of the immense challenges and uncertainties that farmers navigate as they struggle to adapt to the new realities of American agriculture. (Document I) Amidst significant transformation in American agriculture, as technological advancements, government policies, and shifts in economic conditions reshaped the landscape of the farming industry, the excerpt from the document sheds light on the debates surrounding land use during the late 19th century.
The Native Americans were being driven out of their own land so that Americans could wear out the land with their tobacco. Tobacco was called the poor man’s crop, although after a couple years the land was worn out and could grow no more. A chief from the Iroquois Confederacy knew this
Along with the farmer’s crops rapidly diminishing, the unforgiving weather and the drought they faced, an unusual epidemic arose in 1932. This was the year when grasshoppers plagued the land. They came in swarms of millions and would eat entire fields in hours and even household items. Without fields there would be no hay to feed the livestock and Farmers would be forced to start eating the animals or leave them to starve. They could live off of their livestock for a year at most but the drought lasted far longer than that.
Founders were also influenced by John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government where the idea of natural rights were introduced. John Locke believed all men were born with the natural rights of life, liberty, and property. The Second Treatise of Government states, “all men is are naturally in: a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions as persons as they think fit… a state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is mutual.” By saying this the government cannot take away what the man was originally born with.
Without crops, farmers lost valuable money, leaving them with two choices, to move away in order to make a living, or continue to lose money. “60 percent of the population moved from the western area... due to the drought that was killing cattle and ruining crops”(History.com). They had “set up the region for ecological disaster” (History.com) and could no longer live in the area. John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel
Although the two texts ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘Contemporary American Poultry’ both explore greed and where it stems from, ‘Animal Farm’ states that greed blossoms within leadership, whereas ‘Contemporary American Poultry’ warns of followers desiring too much. In ‘Animal Farm’, the pigs that lead the farm and animals slowly become contaminated with their power and want for more, and as such lead them to take “windfall apples” which become “reserved for the pigs alone” from their blind citizens to feed their insatiable desires. This inability to satisfy themselves even leads them to lie to the animals, through Squealer’s “statistics” that food had increased, when in reality the pigs had transformed the farm into a dystopia. Orwell’s depiction of greed
Corelli 's Mandolin was written by Louis de Bernieres, a British novelist who lets his wild imagination shine through his writing. This fiction novel was originally published during 1994 and was later published during 1995 by Vintage. Readers are met with an enthralling story of love and war during the 1900s, involving a clash between Greece, Italy, and Germany. An interesting love affair develops between Captain Antonio Corelli, a sophisticated army officer, and Pelagia Iannis, an intelligent woman practicing medicine alongside her father. Unfortunately, they find it difficult to manage their love affair in the mist of World War II, in addition to maintaining political allegiances.
The Dust Bowl, beginning in the 1930s, added to the struggle of American farmers as lands out west in states such as Oklahoma and Kansas were over-plowed, causing the topsoil to become uprooted, creating massive dust storms. These dust storms left the land unusable to farm, displacing many Americans in the agricultural industry. Steinbeck’s The Harvest Gypsies displays the struggles these farmers faced when moving west to California, hoping to find some sort of work. Many displaced farmers lived in squatters’ camps, temporary dwellings for those looking for work. Steinbeck described these camps as having awful living conditions, saying that “From a distance it looks like a city dump, and well it may, for the city dumps are the sources for the material of which it is built.”
When the farmers they worked for lost their lands, they were left in a much more
At the heart of a seemingly simple, unassuming novella lie political issues that occurred in Russia during and after the Russian Revolution in 1917. George Orwell’s allegorical ‘masterpiece’ as some would say, stems from his own opinions and detestation of the class divide. He shows that an egalitarian society is unachievable, when some characters that exercise power within Animal Farm use forms of both psychological warfare and physical threats in order to keep the ‘lesser’ animals under their control in order to maintain their society which supposedly follows the principles of Animalism; that ‘all animals are equal’. The pigs employ various tactics and express ways of thinking that convince the animals that they are better off than they had
Animal farm is a book written by George Orwell. The book is a reflection of the events of the Russian Revolution and Joseph Stalin’s rise to power. Joseph Stalin is represented by Napoleon and the story follows the events that lead up to Napoleon’s rule over Animal Farm. During the novel, Napoleon uses both psychological and physical fear to control the animals. This is proved by Napoleon using Jones and Snowball as a Physiological fear, to prevent rebellion.
