HIST 205 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Woody Guthrie, Dorothea Lange, John Steinbeck
Document Summary
Price of wheat dropped . 09 to 35 cents a bushel. People lost their farms, could not feed themselves. Share of national income earned by primary producers cut in half (23% to 12%) Collapse of rural income in southern, western prairies (saskatchewan, alberta: unemployment peaked in 1933 at 20% War debts and reparations (europe: western europeans blamed wwi for its debts o. Rise of adolf hitler who blamed religious minority for germany"s problems. Collapse of world commodity prices (wheat, cod: great depression was blamed for the loss of markets in canada, australia and argentina. Tariffs to protect their own markets which hurt foreign markets. Large global forces were largely to blame. 80% of canada"s production was exported: huge dependency on exporting food, machinery, resources. Stock market crash reverberated in canada o. Catastrophic environmental disaster in southwest saskatchewan and southeast alberta. Mechanization of farming: faster and easier o. 1830: 58 hours to plow an acre, 1930: 6 hours: more land under plow.
