FDR, Hoover, and the New Rural Conservation, 1920–1932

Abstract

On a June afternoon in the summer of 1931, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) addressed his fellow governors assembled in Indiana for their annual conference. The severe economic situation, he said, called for positive leadership, tangible experiments, and government guidance. Yet Roosevelt confined his remarks that day to one particular aspect of the nation’s troubles—the “dislocation of a proper balance between urban and rural life.” Describing how hundreds of farmers clung to exhausted lands and eked out an existence far below the “American standard of living,” he outlined measures that New York State had initiated to classify lands, relieve tax burdens, purchase and reforest submarginal farmland, and bring cheaper electricity to the agricultural areas. He looked forward to a time when farmers cultivating land too worn to yield a profit would find alternate employment in factories close to rural communities. Planning for “a permanent agriculture,” Roosevelt explained, was the state’s ultimate purpose.¹