Jay Greathouse: "Family Farms Pulled Us Out of the Great Depression" | CommonDreams.org

[excerpt] It seems to be a widely held myth that World War II was the main agent for moving the United States out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Cornell University Professor George F. Warren, an important adviser to Franklin D. Roosevelt on rural development policy, figured out that it is agriculture that leads countries into and out of depressions. The Roosevelt Administration is the only administration that tried to do something about supporting the family farm. Our recovery started in 1942, the year the Steagall Amendment to the War Stabilization Act mandated farm parity, but the war got the credit. We then had ten years of economic stability until 1952 when the Steagall Amendment was allowed to expire. ... Read more at: CommonDreams.org