ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to compare the relative trends in farm and nonfarm incomes in the United States during the 1920’s. The status of farm incomes in the United States during the 1920’s is the keystone on which the interpretation of agricultural distress in that decade must rest. Economists often argue that the agricultural sector suffers growing income disparity as a nation becomes more and more industrialized. The first major series on national income was published in 1922 by Willford I. King of the National Bureau of Economic Research. The case for agricultural depression in the twenties never rested, of course, either on the idea that farm incomes declined over the decade or that farmers after 1920 earned less absolutely than they did just before the war. The apparent postwar decline in the ratio of farm to nonfarm net incomes had little to do with either price disparity or overproduction.
