The Famine Of 1946-1947 Summary

The Great Depression, the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world was at its lowest point in 1933, the beginning of the book. Over 15 million Americans were unemployed, and half of the country's banks had failed, malnutrition was a big problem for children due to their parents not being able to afford food for them, and many families were evicted from the houses or lands that they lived on. During this period, most African Americans worked on farms that were owned by white landowners and lived in rural areas. While life before the Great Depression was already arduous for African Americans, their living conditions worsened due to the fact that the farmers they worked for lost their land. As previously mentioned, food prices had deflated causing farmers to not be able to make a profit off of their land.

World War 1 had devastating impacts on many countries around the world, even those who weren’t directly involved in the war. Russia was one of those countries deeply affected, as the war had lasting impacts on their economy and social structure for decades after the war ended. The Russian Revolution was the result of World War 1. Russia entered the war in August of 1914 under the rule of Nicholas II. Unlike its European allies, Russia was lagging behind in their economy, as they had a majority agricultural industry throughout the 1800s.

DBQ: Famine in Ethiopia: How did the government make it worse? (hook)From 1983-1985, a famine in Ethiopia caused millions to die. In 1984, grain prices increased by 300% and five Ethiopian provinces set all-time lows for rainfall. Many people, blamed the famine on the drought, but later figured out that the real cause was politics. Soviet-backed communist Derg took over and worsened the famine.

In the years following World War I the increase in farmland only continued, but while farming stayed on an upward trend the average amount of rainfall per year was on a downward trend. As they reached the depression in the mid 1930’s the Great Plains states were in a drought falling from an average of 33.4 inches of rain a year to as low as 9.7 inches, while anything lower than 20 inches being considered catastrophic (Document E). This drought on its own would not have been problematic if not for the ever increasing amounts of topsoil that was left vulnerable by the farming methods of the time. All the loose topsoil due to farming methods hit by a nearly decade long drought and hard winds completely lifted the topsoil off of the ground and blew it away. Topsoil that originated in Texas was blown as far away as New

This was profitable both for the new merchants in the growing towns and for the farmers who chose to raise sheep instead of planting crop. The peasants were thrown away from the patches of land they were renting, as the owners set up fencing, and they had to move to the city. But these unskilled laborers only managed to get poorly paid work or no work at all. As the nobles and the merchant class bathed in extravagance, the people suffered greatly. Most decades of the Elizabethan Age, there was an increase in the poverty rate.

Most workers would go into the war to escape their corporations. They were later bummed to find disbelief. Urbanization was a key factor. It made people move into cities. There were the low ranking labour people who were called Proletariat.

China’s leader Mao implemented a program called Mao’s Great Leap Forward program this program told peasant framers when to plant crops, what to plant and how much to plant. Also peasants were required to turn over a third of their crops for taxed that was meant to feed the cities. In return the presents were made promises from the government such as the commune would provide workers with food, medical care, and other necessities. This contributed to the people starving and going to great lengths to survive such as trading children and killing and eating them, at this time famine was widespread and killing many people in China. Mao ruled for over twenty-seven years and during that time, “he had doomed China’s people to become some of the poorest on the planet”.

From 1928, when the plan started, to 1932 to its end, many factories, dams, power stations and even cities were being built. Despite there being harsh penalties implemented to workers for failure to meet their targets, there was still a significant increase in Russia’s industrial growth in a very short period of time. Just like the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, under Tsar Alexander II, in protest of Stalin’s policies, the peasants, in protest, refused to work harder than they needed too, causing them to destroy livestock and crops, which eventually lead to their unnecessary death. Stalin, just like the Tsarist autocratic regime, was not committed to collectivism but preferred capitalism in his ruling of the Soviet Union. This caused a lot of rebellion from the Kulaks who opposed collectivism.

John Steinbeck works with a lot of different themes in this novel, but the issue of poverty and how capitalism contributes to it, is by far one of the most important aspects of book. The Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1939. Poverty was a lot, and like many people, farmers in the dust bowl lost their land, homes, and ways of earning money. Steinbeck 's novel depicts the experiences of just such farmers, from the loss of their land and bulldozed houses (bulldozer is type of machine), to a move across country in search of a better way of living and providing for themselves and their families.

The first issue was that of technical relations which had been a continuous issue for quite a while. As Russia industrialized in the mid 1900's, the number of inhabitants in modern laborers, particularly in Petrograd and Moscow, blow up. The vast majority of the assembling was focused on these two urban areas. Low wages, extension, absence of work, reduction of satisfactory for places to settle in and food was making life progressively cruel for the laborers, which made the general population lose trust in their government's authority. The second residential issue, was the agriculture difficulty, which was expanding with no time.

The rise and fall of the Populist party all started when farmers from all over the nation gathered together and addressed some common problems that they were facing. Farmers were stuck in a bad economic cycle. Prices for their crops were falling, and unfortunately farmers often had to mortgage their farms so that they could buy more land and produce more crops in order to “flourish”. There was very little suitable land to farm and cultivate and banks were foreclosing on the mortgages of farmers who could not make the payments on their loans. Moreover, the railroads were being taken advantage of farmers by charging excessive prices for shipping and storage.

The Populist development was a rebellion by ranchers in the South and Midwest against the Democratic and Republican Parties for overlooking their hobbies and troubles. For over 10 years, ranchers have experienced harvest disappointments, falling costs, poor promoting, and absence of credit offices. Numerous ranchers were in the red because of a dry spell that influenced the Midwest in the 1880s. In the meantime, costs for Southern cotton dropped. These calamities, joined with disdain against railways, cash loan specialists, grain-lift proprietors, and others with whom agriculturists worked together, drove ranchers to arrange a few different organizations.

Both, urban and rural Americans suffered during the Great Depression, but not in the same way. Many urban Americans had to deal with living in large communities of homes made out of cardboard boxes due to homelessness and lack of food in the cites (Schultz, 2013). At the same time, rural Americans were losing their farms due to the crops as a result of the drought. The Great Depression was a perfect time for the Communist Party of the United States to thrive, as a large portion of Americans believed that Capitalism was the cause of the whole thing.

Zinn focuses the written work on the unnecessary violence expressed by different conquistadors and the way that other sources portray the events in a less than factual way. The conquistadors were led by their desire for treasures and grew increasingly lazy and cruel as they stayed in the America’s. Their stay had affected the way that they think and do things everyday because they had the “indians” at their every beck and call. To achieve the submissive actions of the Natives the conquistadors has taken advantage of their hospitality by having them lead them to the gold and punished them to death. This cruelty is what lead to the mass genocide of a single community of people.

Hardships were often faced in the early 1900’s by all people. The people in cities in the early 1900’s wereare no exception. Many people dealt with poverty, sanitation, education, and even employment issues everyday. City life in the United States duringin the early 1900’s created a struggle for men, women, and children who faced many hardships, health issues, and employment problems.