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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (22832)	8/18/2002 3:13:55 PM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 74559

it seems to me that during the 1920's and 1930's, most of the farmers who went bust were ones that bought land on credit during a land bubble caused by World War I Debt played a part with some, maybe with many. But I think simple low prices resulting from rising productivity made it hard to make a living on small farms. Rambling thoughts: I spent much of my youth with my grandparents on a little farm in southern Illinois (though my grandfather left most days to work for an asphalting company). When my grandparents were young, there was a house with a family on every forty acres in that area. By the time I came along most of the houses and even a nearby little town were gone - literally disappeared. My grandmother would point out to me where people had been buried out in this or that field with no markers. Sometimes the only sign of former habitation would be some now-wild roses growing along side the road. The little town that disappeared, Springville, was wooded even back in my childhood. If you know where you could kick around in the leaves and dirt and find foundations. As a child I marveled to think of the mostly entry countryside I ambled over crawling with people. I thought about where and why they had gone. Well, Chicago and St. Louis and Indianapolis mostly it seems. And some to nearby towns. And why - because you just can't make a living on a small farm anymore. Funny thing, in the last couple decades people have started moving back to the country again, building new houses - not the same families who left though. And not living off the land either. Driving 20 - 40 miles one way every day as if they lived in a large city. Interesting to look think about the changes in a place over the course of a century.