Client Failures and Supervised Credit in the Farm Security Administration

Abstract

The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was the New Deal’s most sustained and successful effort to address chronic rural poverty in the United States, particularly through its program of rural rehabilitation. But at the time and since the effectiveness of rural rehabilitation has been overshadowed by the political fight over the FSA’s survival and the more ambitious (and controversial) resettlement program. Examined in terms of the practical goals of reducing rural poverty, rather than as a gauge for political and ideological trends, the FSA had decidedly modest results. Some of this can be attributed to the limitations and restrictions imposed by hostile political forces and a stingy Congress, but as this essay shows, much of the fault lay within the FSA, as it struggled to define goals and carry out anti-poverty programs for some of the poorest people in America.