Although historians continue to debate the causes of the Great Depression, most agree that several economic problems combined to make the Great Depression especially severe. First, although the 1920s were a period of prosperity for many, several sectors of the economy were weak, especially agriculture and the coal and textile industries. These weak sectors acted as a drag on the rest of the economy. The relatively impoverished condition of American farmers, who averaged 40 percent of urban laborers' income, meant that they could not afford to buy the consumer products — refrigerators, phonographs, and radios — that fueled the boom of the 1920s. Indeed, less than 10 percent of American farms were electrified. Similarly, the average wages of the majority of workers were too low. In the mining industry, for example, although output per man rose 43 percent between 1920 and 1929, yearly earnings fell from $1,700 to $1,481. Although wages.....
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