Were The 1920s Really Roaring Essay

The 1920s are generally regarded as the roaring 20s, and they were roaring. In the cities, wealth and prosperity flourished and art, such as music and literature, was beholden by all. For the urban citizens of America, the 1920s were a roaring good time. However, the same could not be said for Susan Campbell. She was a farmer in Minnesota. She and her brother had grown up on the farm together and eventually they inherited it from their parents. Unfortunately, the farm fell on hard times during the year 1913, and this prompted her brother to move to the city and try and find success there. He tried to convince Susan to come with him, but she turned him down. She was confident that the family farm would return to making profits. Unfortunately,

What had caused things to get so bad? To answer this, you need to go back to WWI. During WWI, Britain and France needed someone to supply their food, creating a high demand for produce. Seeking an opportunity, Susan got an expansion on her farm so she could create more produce to export to Britain and France. These exports helped Susan, as well as many other farmers who had gotten expansions, make record profits, but once the war was over, the exports stopped, and the hard times began. Part of this was because of US policies, which made foreign imports to the US very expensive. This discouraged people from buying foreign goods, which was unfortunate because the less money the foreigners had, the less money they had to spend on Susan’s exports.Without the export sales, Susan and the rest of the farmers found themselves over producing food, and this soon caused them to struggle to sell their produce, mainly because there was so much of it. The value of food decreased, causing the price of it to drop a substantial amount. The falling prices were accompanied with heavy debt, and Susan couldn’t pay it off. With her farm having failed, Susan did the only thing she could do at that point: she sold her farm