The Great Depression

While one can look to several factors that caused the Great Depression, one factor was overproduction of farm products. During the World War I, farmers expanded food production to meet the demands of the nations at war. Following the war, production was not immediately curtailed. Farmers were caught in a boom-or-bust cycle in the postwar decade. While the countries of Europe and the United States were at war, farmers raked in money. But peace brought an end of high farm prices and to massive purchases by other nations, as foreign production reentered the stream of world commerce. Many farmers invested their wartime profits in more land and more machinery with the thought of growing even more crops, but such plans did more harm than good. In Minnesota, for example, the season-average price per bushel of corn rose from fifty-nine cents in 1914 to $1.30 in 1919. Wheat prices jumped from $1.05 per bushel to $2.34. The average price of hogs increased from $7.40 to $16.70 per hundred pounds,...