MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Though economic and labor historians have posited numerous causes of the Great Depression, this paper argues that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 ultimately exacerbated the initial recession, triggering the onset of the most devastating economic downfall that led to lasting consequences for working class culture in the United States. In particular, the paper examines the policy’s implications on the rural American working class and the lives of American agricultural labor; though the government initially attempted to strategize various fiscal and monetary policies to address the needs of the agricultural industries and reduce unemployment, the Tariff Act failed to fulfill the original intent, thus intensifying the struggles and devastation experienced by farmers. Though the Depression era resulted in a wide range of major transformations, from the restructuring of different fiscal and monetary policies to the misuse of labor rights and regulations, the most central transformations during the time period concerned the economics of the rural working class. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 attempted to protect domestic agricultural industries to gain the consent of agricultural labor unions at the expense of foreign demand for American agricultural exports. The policy devastated the agricultural sector, which in turn caused businesses to resort to the abuse of labor rights and the involvement in corrupt practices, such as severely undercutting wages, in order to maintain economic profit. The spillover effect of the extreme disregard for the management of labor rights and regulations was the rise of major agricultural labor unions that sought to counter the corruption and majorly transform the nation as a whole.

By investigating the oral histories of various social groups of the early twentieth century, the severity of the hardships that American farmers had to face can be seen. The desolation of the agricultural sector instigated a time period of major transformation of American agriculture: the rise of industrial agriculture and different agricultural labor movements. The paper studies the different transformations in traditional agriculture, the various labor groups that were created as a response to the policy, and the significance of their labor movements on American agriculture and their broader implications for working class culture in America.