The Difference a Year Makes

April 19, 1932  John H. Reimer, K. H. Reimer, and I went along with H. H. Reimer to Plains and Liberal, looking to buy a combine and one-way.

 April 19, 1933  Did laundry.  I went to Meade.  Sold a cow for $8.00 for which I paid $75.00 two years ago.  In the evening we had a big dust storm.  I was sick again.

The Great Depression really struck farmers on the Great Plains in the summer of 1932 when the terrible drought began that led to crop failure and dust storms.  Before that, the Great Depression had been mostly an urban and industrial phenomenon, affecting factory workers and city dwellers.  Of course, farmers did feel a bit of a pinch already, but it was not worse than the usual cycles in farming.  In the spring of 1932, Cornelius was shopping for a combine and a one-way with his brothers-in-law, John H., Klaas H., and Henry H. Reimer.  Plains is a town 15 miles west of Meade, where Charles Angell, the inventor of the one-way disc plow lived; and Liberal is 40 miles southwest of Meade.  Clearly, Cornelius had money to spend. 

Exactly one year later in April 1933, Cornelius sold a cow for $8 for which he had paid $75 a couple years earlier.  Not only had he had paid nine times as much for the cow two years ago, but he had fed it for a couple years.  As feed got more expensive, it cost more to feed a cow, so he would sell the poorer milk producers to reduce the number of mouths to feed.  To top it off, there was a big dust storm, and Cornelius was sick with the excruciating pain of kidney stones again.  What a change a year had brought.