{"product_id":"the-farm-security-administration-and-rural-rehabilitation-in-the-south-9781621901600","title":"The Farm Security Administration and Rural Rehabilitation in the South","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs the roaring twenties turned into the depressed thirties, southern farmers, far removed from the\u003cbr\u003eurban prosperity Americans had enjoyed during the 1920s heyday, found already difficult farming\u003cbr\u003econditions greatly intensified by the onset of the Great Depression. Agricultural incompetence\u003cbr\u003eplagued the rural South through the misuse of land, depletion of natural resources, and a system\u003cbr\u003eof single-crop farming that failed to adequately provide for growing families on small farms, especially\u003cbr\u003ein the cotton-producing Southeast. Poverty and desperation came to define the farming\u003cbr\u003ecommunities of the rural South, both in reality and in Americans’ collective conscious.\u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Farm Security Administration and Rural Rehabilitation in the South\u003c\/i\u003e, Charles Kenneth\u003cbr\u003eRoberts traces the administrative and political history of the Farm Security Administration\u003cbr\u003e(FSA) and reconciles the administration’s goals with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s overall vision for the\u003cbr\u003eNew Deal. Roberts takes a grassroots approach to dissecting the FSA’s history. While other studies\u003cbr\u003ehave focused on FSA photography or community building, or even policy making in terms of\u003cbr\u003etop-down government directives, Roberts focuses on the people and state governments who faced\u003cbr\u003ean immediate need to aid southern farmers within their own borders and to boost their states’\u003cbr\u003ecrumbling agricultural economic bases. Roberts focuses on rural rehabilitation as a key aspect of\u003cbr\u003ethe FSA and defines the agency’s legacy not in terms of its failures but rather in terms of an idealistic\u003cbr\u003eprogram whose modest successes were ultimately too few to effect real change for southern\u003cbr\u003efarmers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThough Roosevelt failed to adequately recognize the plight of the southern farmer and political\u003cbr\u003einfighting hindered many of the administration’s goals, the creation of the FSA stands as one of\u003cbr\u003ethe first efforts to provide sustained relief to struggling southern farmers. In light of other federal\u003cbr\u003eprograms of the era, the FSA may seem like a mere footnote to the New Deal outside of its small\u003cbr\u003ebut revered photography program. But, as Roberts shows, the FSA’s legacy has endured to the\u003cbr\u003epresent day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis book fills an important void in the historical literature on New Deal reform\u003cbr\u003eand significantly updates Sidney Baldwin’s 1968 book on the FSA. Through the lens of\u003cbr\u003ethe programs of the FSA, Charles Kenneth Roberts does an excellent job of relating how\u003cbr\u003eNew Deal programs attempted to rehabilitate poor, rural southerners.”\u003cbr\u003e—Aaron D. Purcell, author of \u003ci\u003eArthur Morgan: A Progressive Vision for American Reform\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"University of Tennessee Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53188886167895,"sku":"9781621901600","price":50.4,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-farm-security-administration-and-rural-rehabilitation-in-the-south-9781621901600","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}