| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Down and Out on the Family Farm: Rural Rehabilitation in the Great Plains, 1929–1945. By Michael Johnston Grant. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. xii, 232 pp. Paper, $39.95, ISBN 0-8032-7105-0.)

On the way to corporate agriculture, the disappearance of the family farm, and the end of many welfare programs for poor families, one federal agency had the vision to reform rural America and help small producers and tenant farmers stay on land. Unfortunately, the government did not have the political will or state capacity to empower it. Rural rehabilitation programs, part of the larger Farm Security Administration, were a short-lived, underfunded aspect of the New Deal that "helped make [borderline] farmer operators more secure in diet, soil fertility, tenure, and land management" (p. 200). Perhaps more important, Michael Johnston Grant writes, they also showed clients "that they mattered and that their government was concerned about them" (p. 201). Perhaps so, but, as Grant himself shows, the government was not concerned enough to make a lasting difference.

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