Young Migrant Mother Just Finished Washing - 1939

This photo was taken at the Merrill FSA (Farm Security Administration) Camp in Klamath County in October, 1939. Initially created as the Resettlement Administration as part of the New Deal, the FSA was an effort during the Depression to combat American rural poverty. Stressing "rural rehabilitation" efforts to improve the lifestyle of sharecroppers, tenants, and very poor landowning farmers, the program purchased farmers' submarginal land and resettled them on group farms.

Critics, including the Farm Bureau, strongly opposed the FSA as an experiment in collectivizing agriculture. The program failed because the farmers wanted ownership, and after the Conservative coalition took control of Congress it transformed the FSA into a program to help farmers buy land, an intiative that continues today as the Farmers Home Administration.

-- This photo is restored and printed by Old Oregon.