Farmers tended to be deeply suspicious of the city. Few met city merchants and bankers as financial or social equals. Money, rather than reciprocity, undergirded social relations.

In small towns, the web of relations extended to the countryside in mutual dependency. Merchants were often farmers, and the children of farmers frequently married into the towns. The Depression shattered that world, following the collapse in farm prices after World War 1.

During the twentieth century, the center of gravity shifted from the countryside to the city. By the end of the century, few Americans made their living from agriculture.
Unemployed miners on a street corner. Johnston City, Illinois, January, 1939. Arthur Rothstein, FSA/OWI, Library of Congress.
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