Farmer Foreclosures
Then, in October 1929, the whole financial house of cards that was the U.S. economy collapsed, triggered by the stock market crash. Although then President Hoover dubbed the disaster a “Depression,” as that seemed to him to sound better than the term “Panic” that had been used in the past, that’s what occurred: panic. The banks looked shaky and depositors wanted their money, making them shakier still, and in time many were forced to close. Factories and businesses got rid of large numbers of employees or closed down altogether. The malaise spread across much of the industrialized world, and soon there was no money to buy the farmer’s products or anything else. Desperate bankers called in their loans, but farmers had no money to pay them and foreclosures and bankruptcy sales became daily events.