The Worst Hard Time

The first paragraph of this chapter explains how the High Plains land becomes over-plowed. With all these new farmers, the region yields a wheat surplus by 1929, but there are foreign factors contributing to the wheat surplus. Europe also has a wheat surplus, especially after Russia starts exporting wheat again. So now the cities and towns on the High Plains have “towers of grain that nobody wanted” (59).Wheat prices go down steadily, to below 1.50 dollars a bushel from 2.25 dollars a few years earlier, then below a dollar, and then to 75 cents a bushel. According to Egan, “Farmers had two choices: They could cut back hoping supplies would tighten and prices would rise, or they could plant more as a way to make the same money on higher output. Across the southern plain, the response was overwhelming; the farmers tore up more grass. They had debts for new tractors, plows, combines, and land purchased” (59).

Against the backdrop of the wheat price decline, Egan brings to the forefront George Ehrlich, and his description dominates the rest of the chapter. Ehrlich is not as discouraged by the wheat prices plunging as other farmers. Ehrlich had lived through the torching of his people's villages on the Volga River in Russia by a Tartar tribe, the czar's revocation of Catherine the Great's Manifesto (which protected him and his family), and a near fatal boat crash on his journey to America.