Farm Security Administration
The Farm Security Administration ( FSA ) was founded in 1937 as the successor to the Resettlement Administration (RA) under Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policy . Their aim was to help the small farmers and the rural poor. The FSA was finally dissolved in 1946. In Europe she is known for her photographic documentation of rural America during this time.
overview
Formed during the New Deal , the Farm Security Administration was an experiment to collectivize agriculture from 1935 onwards, bringing farmers together to try out modern techniques under the guidance of experts on large government-owned farms. The program failed because the farmers wanted to own it, so the program was converted to help farmers buy land. The program is also known for its small but influential photography program. The FSA was formed in 1935 within the Department of Agriculture from three different organizations, namely the "Subsistence Homestead Division of the Interior Department", farm projects of the "Federal Emergency Relief Administration" and the "Resettlement Administration". Originally created by decree, it was legitimized by Congress in 1937 through the Bankhead Jones Farm Tenant Act. Rexford Tugwell had originally planned the "Resettlement Andministration", but was no longer in office in 1935. The head of the FSA was Will W. Alexander . Together with some employees, he was also an advocate of “civil rights”, as about a third of the FSA's clientele in the extreme south of the USA were of African descent.
The utility
The RA and FSA bought small farms that were no longer economically viable and founded 34 livelihood communities where groups of farmers, under the guidance of government workers, were to live together and work on common land. They were not allowed to purchase their land for fear that they would revert to their inefficient ways of working if they were not guided by the RA and FSA. In 1936 the Republican National Committee accused the RA that the communities they supported were “communist-oriented” ( communistic in conception ), and they also complained that President Roosevelt's RA was establishing state farms that followed the Russian model. (" President Roosevelt's Resettlement Administration is establishing communal farms which follow the Russian pattern. "). RA and FSA spokesmen said they were influenced by Jefferson and denied following a Soviet model. More serious opposition came from the conventional farmers organized in the Farm Bureau . It denounced "inexcusable waste, extravagance, and incompetence, and the misuse of farm relief funds for the pursuit of the pursuit of socialist ends socialistic objectives inimical to the American way of agriculture ). The RA and FSA had tense relationships both with the state agricultural colleges and with their extension services . The FSA received support from James C. Patton of the more radical National Farmers Union (NFU) and from Florida's Senator Claude Pepper .
Numerous sandstorms in the Dust Bowl in the Great Plains displaced thousands of owning farmers, tenants and workers, many of them (called "Okies" or "Arkies") emigrated to California. The FSA ran camps for them, also described in John Steinbeck's The Fruits of Wrath .
The RA and FSA provided instructional assistance to 455,000 farming families from 1936 to 1943. In June 1936 Roosevelt wrote: “You are right, the farmers atone for their own fault. I wish they had a talk with Tugwell about what he's doing to educate these farmers so they can become self-sufficient. During the past year, his organization has made 104,000 farming families self-sufficient through mentoring and training based on practical examples. That's a pretty good result! "(" You are right about the farmers who suffer through their own fault ... I wish you would have a talk with Tugwell about what he is doing to educate this type of farmer to become self-sustaining . During the past year his organization has made 104,000 farm families practically self-sustaining by supervision and education along practical lines. That is a pretty good record! ")
The primary goal of the FSA was not to favor products or prices. Roosevelt's agricultural policy had sought to lower agricultural production in order to raise prices. However, when agricultural production fell, the lessees and small landowners suffered most from not being able to bring enough goods to market to raise the rent. Many tenants wanted money to buy their own farms, but the Department of Agriculture found there were too many farmers and it did not have a farm buy-out program. Instead of using further training as an aid, the poor saved over a longer period of time. Congress, however, demanded that the FSA help tenants acquire farms. $ 191 million was made available in bonds to be repaid at some point. A much larger program, for 950,000 farm tenants, was $ 778 million (with effective interest of 1%). The aim was to make the farms more efficient, so the bonds were used to buy new machines, trucks, livestock or to repay old debts. At all times the borrowers were advised by a government official. Advice on family issues was also on the agenda, for example the FSA set up a preventive health program and taught the farmers' wives how to cook and raise children. Up to a third of the sum was never paid back because the tenants moved to the city because of the better living conditions.
The photo program
RA and FSA are also known for the influence of their photography program. From 1935 to 1944, photographers and authors were hired to document and report on the plight of the poor farmers. The FSA's Information Department was responsible for providing educational information and press materials to the public. Under Roy Stryker , this department set itself the task of “ introducing America to Americans ”. Many of the most famous photographers of the Great Depression were sponsored by the FSA. Walker Evans , Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks were three of the most famous photographers employed by the FSA. The FSA was also described in Gordon Parks' autobiographical novel Despite Unequal Opportunities .
The photographers
The FSA's group of photographers consisted of: Charlotte Brooks , Esther Bubley , Marjory Collins , Harold Corsini , Jack Delano , Arnold Eagle , Walker Evans , Theodor Jung , Dorothea Lange , Russell Lee , Sol Libsohn , Carl Mydans , Martha McMillan Roberts , Gordon Parks , Marion Post Wolcott , Edwin Rosskam , Louise Rosskam , Arthur Rothstein , Richard Saunders , Ben Shahn , John Vachon , Todd Webb
Together with John Steinbeck's Fruits of Wrath (a non-governmental project) and documenting literature (e.g. Walker Evans and James Agee's awards, I want the big men ), the FSA photography program is partly responsible for the creation of the image of the Depression in the United States. Many of the photographs appeared in popular magazines. The photographers were under the control of Washington as to what overall impression the New Deal wanted to give out . Stryker's program focused on his reliance on social work, the poor living conditions of cotton farmers and the even worse of wandering migrant workers. He was also committed to social reform through the New Deal's encroachment on people's lives. Stryker asked the photographers to “relate people to the land and vice versa ” because these photos strengthened the RA's position to reduce poverty by “changing agricultural practices” ( changing land practices ) is controllable. So Stryker didn't tell his photographers what to photograph, he just sent them lists of possible subjects, e.g. B. Churches, court sessions or barns. He looked for pictures of migrant workers telling a story of their daily life. He asked Dorothea Lange for photos that emphasized cooking, sleeping arrangements, and religious and social life.
The RA and FSA had 250,000 images of rural poverty made. Less than half of the images survived and are now housed in the Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs Division . The library has now put all 164,000 negatives developed online. Of these, around 77,000 different original prints and 644 color photos from 1,600 color negatives were made.
Documentaries
The RA also sponsored two documentaries by Pare Lorentz , The Plow That Broke The Plains, about opening up the Dust Bowl and The River, about the importance of the Mississippi. The films have been designated "Culturally Valuable" by the Library of Congress and selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry.
The end of the FSA
With the beginning of the World War there were millions of vacant factory jobs in the cities, so there was no longer a need for the FSA to exist. In late 1942, Roosevelt moved the housing programs to the National Housing Agency, and in 1943 Congress cut most of the funds for the FSA. The photography department was subordinated to the United States Office of War Information for one year , during which time it delivered propaganda and was then disbanded. In 1946 the social reformers were finally laid off and the FSA was replaced by a new agency, the Farmers Home Administration, which took on the task of financially supporting farm tenants, especially war veterans, in acquiring land without the supervision of experts. It became part of Lyndon B. Johnson's War on Poverty in the 1960s, with a generous $ 4.2 billion budget for rural America to provide loans to low-income farming families and cooperatives.
literature
The utility
- Sidney Baldwin; Poverty and Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Farm Security Administration University of North Carolina Press, 1968, a scholarly study by a senior FSA official
- Greta De Jong; "'With the Aid of God and the FSA': The Louisiana Farmers' Union and the African American Freedom Struggle in the New Deal Era" In: Journal of Social History , Vol. 34, 2000.
- Michael Johnston Grant; "Down and Out on the Family Farm: Rural Rehabilitation in the Great Plains, 1929-1945" University of Nebraska Press. 2002. ISBN 0-8032-7105-0
- Lewis Meriam; Relief and Social Security The Brookings Institution. 1946.
- Star sher; Bernard. Rexford Tugwell and the New Deal Rutgers University Press. 1964
The photo program
- Agee, James: I want to praise the big men: three tenant families. - Munich: Schirmer-Mosel, 1989. ISBN 3-88814-287-3
- Pete Daniel, et al., Official Images: New Deal Photography Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987 ISBN 0-87474-349-4
- James Curtis; Mind's Eye, Mind's Truth: FSA Photography Reconsidered Temple University Press, 1989 ISBN 0-87722-627-X
- Cara A. Finnegan. Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and FSA Photographs Smithsonian Books, 2003. ISBN 1-58834-118-6
- Andrea Fisher, Let Us Now Praise Famous Women Pandora Press, 1987. ISBN 0-86358-123-4
- Carl Fleischhauer and Beverly W. Brannan, eds., Documenting America, 1935-1943 University of California Press, 1988. ISBN 0-520-06221-3
- James Guimond, American Photography and the American Dream (1991), chap. 4: "The Signs of Hard Times" ISBN 0-86358-123-4
- Jack Hurley, Portrait of a Decade: Roy Stryker and the Development of Documentary Photography in the Thirties Louisiana State University Press, 1972. ISBN 0-306-80058-6
- Dorothea Lange and Paul Schuster Taylor, An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion (1939); second revised edition, Yale University Press, 1969.
- Michael Leicht, How Katie Tingle refused to pose properly and Walker Evans didn't resent it , Bielefeld: transcript, 2006. ISBN 3-89942-436-0
- Nicholas Natanson, The Black Image in the New Deal: The Politics of FSA Photography University of Tennessee Press, 1992. ISBN 0-87049-723-5, ISBN 0-87049-724-3
- Parks, Gordon: Despite Unequal Arms. - Düsseldorf: Econ-Verlag, 1967.
- Steinbeck, John: fruits of anger. - Vienna: Zsolnay, 2002. ISBN 3-552-05191-0
- Stumberger, Rudolf : class pictures. Social documentary photography 1900–1945. Konstanz 2007. ISBN 978-3-89669-639-7 ISBN 3-89669-639-4
Web links
- The Library of Congress: America from the Great Depression to World War II