Triple-A Plowed Under is a Living Newspaper play produced by the Federal Theatre Project in 1936. [1] Written by Arthur Arent from research by the editorial staff of the Federal Theatre Project and directed by Joseph Losey, [2] it focused on the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 and the plight of Dust Bowl farmers. [3] The production premiered on Broadway at the Biltmore Theatre on March 14, 1936 and ran until May 2, 1936. [4]
The Federal Theatre Project, directed by Hallie Flanagan, was created in 1935 as one of the Works Project Administration's five Federal Project Number One projects to provide relief for unemployed actors, artists, writers, directors and theater workers during the Great Depression. [5] They made use of the theatrical genre known as the Living Newspaper, which used drama to provide the public with information on social issues and current events.
During World War I, American farmers were urged to increase crop production and stock-pile agricultural products to provide aid for Europe, which resulted in a surplus after the war was over. As a result of the Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1930, farmers found it difficult to generate income from this surplus. [6] In the midst of the Great Depression, the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was brought into law as part of the New Deal for the purpose of raising the value of crops by offering farmers subsidies in return for not planting on part of their land. However, the act was quickly declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court as it violated the Tenth Amendment, with Justice Owen Roberts stating that the federal government was invading areas of jurisdiction reserved by the constitution to the states by regulating agriculture. [7]
Presented through a cohesive series of twenty six scenes derived from several news events and narrated by a disembodied voice that provided commentary on the action referred to as the "Voice of the Living Newspaper," Triple-A Plowed Under criticized the AAA, and suggested that farmers and laborers work together to avoid the "middlemen" who had their own commercial interests in mind. [3]
Vignettes include the devaluation of crops as a result of surplus after World War I, farm foreclosures after the decrease in demand left farmers unable to pay mortgages, auctions held in desperate attempts to make more money, the deliberate destruction of crops, the destruction brought on by the Dust Bowl and the drought that followed, the organization of co operations between farmer and consumers, the establishment of the AAA, the Supreme Court's verdict, and the banding together of workers and farmers against dealers and other greedy middlemen. [8]
| Title [9] | |
|---|---|
| One | "War and Inflation" |
| Two | "Deflation" |
| Three | "Farmer, Dealer, Manufacturer, Worker-Vicious Circle" |
| Four | "Farmers' Holiday" |
| Five | "Milk Prices" |
| Six | "Sioux City-Farmers Organize" |
| Seven | "Milk Strike" |
| Eight | "Farm Auction" |
| Nine | "Lem Harris, Secretary of the Farmers' National Relief Conference" |
| Ten | "Farm and City Families" |
| Eleven | "Triple-A Enacted" |
| Twelve | "Shirt Scene" |
| Thirteen | "Wheat Pit" |
| Fourteen | "Counter Restaurant" |
| Fifteen | "Park Avenue Restaurant" |
| Sixteen | "Drought" |
| Seventeen | "Church" |
| Eighteen | "Wheat Pit" |
| Nineteen | "Cotton Patch" |
| Twenty | "Sharecroppers" |
| Twenty-One | "Meat Strike" |
| Twenty-Two | "Mrs. Dorothy Sherwood" |
| Twenty-Three | "Supreme Court ... AAA killed" |
| Twenty-Four | "The Big "Steal"" |
| Twenty-Five | "Soil Conservation" |
| Twenty-Six | "Finale" |
The Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929, under the administration of Herbert Hoover, established the Federal Farm Board from the Federal Farm Loan Board established by the Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 with a revolving fund of half a billion dollars. The original act was sponsored by Hoover in an attempt to stop the downward spiral of crop prices by seeking to buy, sell and store agricultural surpluses or by generously lending money to farm organizations. Money was lent out to the farmers in order to buy seed and food for the livestock, which was especially important since there had previously been a drought in the Democratic South. However, Hoover refused to lend to the farmers themselves, as he thought that it would be unconstitutional to do so and if they were lent money, they would become dependent on government money.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) was a United States federal law of the New Deal era designed to boost agricultural prices by reducing surpluses. The government bought livestock for slaughter and paid farmers subsidies not to plant on part of their land. The money for these subsidies was generated through an exclusive tax on companies that processed farm products. The Act created a new agency, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration, also called "AAA" (1933–1942), an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to oversee the distribution of the subsidies. The Agriculture Marketing Act, which established the Federal Farm Board in 1929, was seen as an important precursor to this act. The AAA, along with other New Deal programs, represented the federal government's first substantial effort to address economic welfare in the United States.
The Dust Bowl was the result of a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors and human-made factors: a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion, most notably the destruction of the natural topsoil by settlers in the region. The drought came in three waves: 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as long as eight years.
The Plow That Broke the Plains is a 1936 short documentary film that shows the cultivation of the Great Plains region of the United States and Canada following the Civil War and leading up to the Dust Bowl as a result of farmers' exploitation of the Great Plains' natural resources.The Plow That Broke the Plains was the first film created by the US government for commercial release and distribution through the Resettlement Administration as part of President Roosevelt's New Deal program. The Resettlement Administration recruited Pare Lorentz to produce The Plow That Broke the Plains to support its campaign of showing the public that the search for profits in the West resulted in the displacement of settlers, misuse of the land, and ultimately resulted in the dust storms that affected the Great Plains regions in the 1930s. The film was one of the most widely publicized attempts by the U.S. federal government to communicate to its citizens through motion pictures.
The Federal Theatre Project was a theatre program established during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal to fund live artistic performances and entertainment programs in the United States. It was one of five Federal Project Number One projects sponsored by the Works Progress Administration, created not as a cultural activity but as a relief measure to employ artists, writers, directors, and theater workers. National director Hallie Flanagan shaped the FTP into a federation of regional theaters that created relevant art, encouraged experimentation in new forms and techniques, and made it possible for millions of Americans to see live theatre for the first time. Although The Federal Theatre project consumed only 0.5% of the allocated budget from the WPA and was widely considered a commercial and critical success, the project became a source of heated political contention. Congress responded to the project's racial integration and accusations of Communist infiltration and cancelled its funding effective June 30, 1939. One month before the project's end, drama critic Brooks Atkinson summarized: "Although the Federal Theatre is far from perfect, it has kept an average of ten thousand people employed on work that has helped to lift the dead weight from the lives of millions of Americans. It has been the best friend the theatre as an institution has ever had in this country."
The history of agriculture in the United States covers the period from the first English settlers to the present day. In Colonial America, agriculture was the primary livelihood for 90% of the population, and most towns were shipping points for the export of agricultural products. Most farms were geared toward subsistence production for family use. The rapid growth of population and the expansion of the frontier opened up large numbers of new farms, and clearing the land was a major preoccupation of farmers. After 1800, cotton became the chief crop in southern plantations, and the chief American export. After 1840, industrialization and urbanization opened up lucrative domestic markets. The number of farms grew from 1.4 million in 1850, to 4.0 million in 1880, and 6.4 million in 1910; then started to fall, dropping to 5.6 million in 1950 and 2.2 million in 2008.
The Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment ActPub. L.Tooltip Public Law 74–461, enacted February 29, 1936) is a United States federal law that allowed the government to pay farmers to reduce production so as to conserve soil and prevent erosion.
Rexford Guy Tugwell was an American economist who became part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first "Brain Trust", a group of Columbia University academics who helped develop policy recommendations leading up to Roosevelt's New Deal. Tugwell served in FDR's administration until he was forced out in 1936. He was a specialist on planning and believed the government should have large-scale plans to move the economy out of the Great Depression because private businesses were too frozen in place to do the job. He helped design the New Deal farm program and the Resettlement Administration that moved subsistence farmers into small rented farms under close supervision. His ideas on suburban planning resulted in the construction of Greenbelt, Maryland, with low-cost rents for relief families. He was denounced by conservatives for advocating state-directed economic planning to overcome the Great Depression.
Living Newspaper is a theatrical form presenting factual information on current events to a popular audience. Historically, Living Newspapers have also urged social action and reacted against naturalistic and realistic theatrical conventions in favor of the more direct, experimental techniques of agitprop theatre, including the extensive use of multimedia. Living Newspapers originated in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution,
The Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, formerly the Biltmore Theatre, is a Broadway theater at 261 West 47th Street in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Opened in 1925, it was designed by Herbert J. Krapp in the neo-Renaissance style and was constructed for Irwin Chanin. It has 650 seats across two levels and is operated by the Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC). The auditorium interior is a New York City landmark, and the theater is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Since 2008, the theater has been named for Broadway publicist Samuel J. Friedman (1912–1974), whose family was a major donor to MTC.
The Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation was one of the so-called alphabet agencies set up in the United States during the 1930s as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. Created in 1933 as the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation, its name was changed by charter amendment on November 18, 1935. In 1937 its administration was placed within the United States Department of Agriculture. In 1940 it was combined with other USDA initiatives to form the Surplus Marketing Administration. It was abolished February 23, 1942, with the creation of the Agricultural Marketing Administration.
In different administrative and organizational forms, the Food for Peace program of the United States has provided food assistance around the world for more than 60 years. Approximately 3 billion people in 150 countries have benefited directly from U.S. food assistance. The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance within the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the U.S. Government's largest provider of overseas food assistance. The food assistance programming is funded primarily through the Food for Peace Act. The Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance also receives International Disaster Assistance Funds through the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) that can be used in emergency settings.
The California Walnut Board or Walnut Marketing Board, founded in 1933, supports the California walnut industry. The organization was originally known as the Walnut Control Board, changing its name to the Walnut Marketing Board in 1962 and to the California Walnut Board in 2008. Its formation was authorized by the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA).
In the United States, the farm bill is comprehensive omnibus bill that is the primary agricultural and food policy instrument of the federal government. Congress typically passes a new farm bill every five to six years.
George Nelson Peek was an American agricultural economist, business executive, and civil servant. He was the first administrator of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) and the first president of the two banks that would become the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
The Potato Control Law (1929) was based upon an economic policy enacted by U.S. President Herbert Hoover's Federal Emergency Relief Administration at the beginning of the Great Depression. The policy became a formal act in 1935, and its legislative sponsors were from the state of North Carolina. Hoover's presidential successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, signed the Act into law on August 24, 1935.
The agricultural policy of the United States is composed primarily of the periodically renewed federal U.S. farm bills. The Farm Bills have a rich history which initially sought to provide income and price support to US farmers and prevent them from adverse global as well as local supply and demand shocks. This implied an elaborate subsidy program which supports domestic production by either direct payments or through price support measures. The former incentivizes farmers to grow certain crops which are eligible for such payments through environmentally conscientious practices of farming. The latter protects farmers from vagaries of price fluctuations by ensuring a minimum price and fulfilling their shortfalls in revenue upon a fall in price. Lately, there are other measures through which the government encourages crop insurance and pays part of the premium for such insurance against various unanticipated outcomes in agriculture.
The Soil Bank Act of 1956 was part of the Agricultural Act of 1956 passed by the U.S. Congress. This act created the Soil Bank Program, which removed farmland from production in an effort to reduce large crop surpluses after World War II. Land deposited into the Soil Bank was then converted into conservation use. The idea for the Soil Bank was taken from legislation from the 1930s dust bowl and was similar to many depression-era solutions to lower crop prices. Eventually, the Soil Bank act of 1956 was overturned by the Food and Agriculture Act of 1965.
A farm crisis describes times of agricultural recession, low crop prices and low farm incomes. The most recent US farm crisis occurred during the 1980s.
Margaret McNair O’Neal was a Euro-American woman who lived in rural Orange County, North Carolina, who was interviewed by William O. Forster on October 4, 1938 for the Federal Writers' Project. She married Ed O’Neal and together they had five boys, but raised nine children until the time of Ed's death in 1938.
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