"1927 made $7000 in cotton. 1928 broke even. 1929 went in the hole. 1930 went in still deeper. 1931 lost everything. 1932 hit the road."
The Great Depression began on October 29, 1929 and lasted in the United States until our entry into World War II. During an economic depression, farmers usually do okay because they can at least feed their families, but in the U.S. we experienced the great dust bowl that destroyed croplands and sent farmers looking for work, like the man and his family in this photograph.
According to Open Culture, "the Farm Security Administration took on the task of 'introducing America to Americans' through photography. The FSA hired Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks and other artists to capture images of ordinary Americans, specifically poor farmers."
Many of the photographs have been missing for decades, but recently a NYC library curator tracked them down, cataloged them, and created an online archive.
We often think -- even in this economic recession -- that things could never get this bad again, which may or may not be true, but these people lived through hardships that, hopefully, we will never experience.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words; what words would you use to describe some of these pictures? How would our society react to such a catastrophe today?
