Farmers were the most vulnerable to foreclosure in the Depression. “In Iowa, the most heavily mortgaged state, nearly one-third of the value of farms was in thrall, mainly to banks and insurance,” describes Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. With bread selling for three cents a loaf and milk at eight cents a quart, farmers organized an influential movement called the Farmers’ Holiday Association to protest, sometimes violently, price devaluation. In May 1932 hundreds of farmers disrupted the nation’s food supply by destroying their crops and blockading highways and rails to prevent trucks or trains
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