In the spring of 1935, while the United States was still reeling from the economic collapse of 1929, and while the Democratic administration was attempting to ward off opponents on both the Right and the Left, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established by executive order an independent governmental agency charged with the task of alleviating one of the nation's most chronic and deep-rooted social ills: widespread rural poverty. The Resettlement Administration (RA) was largely the brainchild of Rexford Guy Tugwell, a member of Roosevelt's inner circle of advisers who had been serving as Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, and Tugwell was made head of the new agency. The Resettlement Administration was not lavishly financed (its funds derived from the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of April, 1935, which specifically appropriated money “for rural rehabilitation and relief in stricken agricultural areas”), but it quickly found itself dealing with a large number of diverse and frequently intractable programs and problems. As originally set up, The Resettlement Administration had a threefold mission: (1) the establishment of a land use program that would deal with such problems as soil erosion and flood control; (2) the inception of resettlement projects in both rural and suburban areas; and (3) the establishment of a loan and grants program for impoverished farmers. Soon after it got under way, the RA was given the task of working out a program of debt consolidation and adjustment between farmers and their creditors, and it also took on the job of improving conditions in migratory labor camps.

The author is grateful to the American Council of Learned Societies for a Grant-in-Aid, which assisted in the preparation of this portfolio of photographs, and to the Library of Congress for its cooperation.