Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal
Jess Gilbert
Abstract
Late in the 1930s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture set up a national network of local organizations that joined farmers with public administrators, adult-educators, and social scientists. The aim was to localize and unify earlier New Deal programs concerning soil conservation, farm production control, tenure security, and other reforms, and by 1941 some 200,000 farm people were involved. Even so, conservative anti-New Dealers killed the successful program the next year. This book re-examines the era's agricultural policy and tells the neglected story of the New Deal agrarian leaders and the ... More
Late in the 1930s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture set up a national network of local organizations that joined farmers with public administrators, adult-educators, and social scientists. The aim was to localize and unify earlier New Deal programs concerning soil conservation, farm production control, tenure security, and other reforms, and by 1941 some 200,000 farm people were involved. Even so, conservative anti-New Dealers killed the successful program the next year. This book re-examines the era's agricultural policy and tells the neglected story of the New Deal agrarian leaders and their visionary ideas about land, democratization, and progressive social change.
Keywords:
U.S. Department of Agriculture,
New Deal programs,
soil conservation,
farm production control,
tenure security,
farmers,
agricultural policy
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780300207316 |
| Published to Yale Scholarship Online: September 2015 |
DOI:10.12987/yale/9780300207316.001.0001 |
