With prices for crops, in real terms, falling below what they’d been in colonial times, financial disaster began to overwhelm rural America. In Iowa, the Farmers’ Holiday Association organized a strike in which farmers refused to bring food to market for 30 days. “Rebellion in the Cornbelt: American Farmers Beat Their Ploughshares Into Swords” was the title of a December 1932 article in Harper’s that described the farmers’ increasing desperation and militancy. Even assuming these people are very good at what they do, you have to wonder: is anyone really that good? A far-fetched scenario, surely, but no harder for us to imagine in 2016 than the lived reality of rural Texas 80 years ago.

Source: The Guardian November 05, 2016 10:52 UTC