Disaster.

The Depression was one of the most devastating agricultural disasters in American history, and American farmers suffered terribly. In 1934 more than 30 percent of all Americans still lived on farms, and agriculture — even in that drought year — produced $9.5 billion. But a combination of natural disasters and human miscalculations devastated American farming in the 1930s. The decade opened with a series of natural catastrophes: in 1930 hail destroyed wheat crops, and 1932 to 1935 were years of unrelenting drought. This, combined with plummeting agricultural prices, ruined countless farm families. Caroline Henderson, who lived on her family farm in Shelton, Oklahoma, wrote in the summer of 1935: "[Our] daily physical torture, confusion of mind, gradual wearing down of courage, make that long continued hope look like a vanishing dream. . . ."

Despair.

Such despair was common among farmers and their families. Rural America had traditionally embraced bedrock...