<P> The FSA's primary mission was not to aid farm production or prices . Roosevelt's agricultural policy had, in fact, been to try to decrease agricultural production in order to increase prices . However, when production was discouraged, the tenant farmers and small holders suffered most by not being able to ship enough to market to pay rents . Many renters wanted money to buy farms, but the Agriculture Department realized there already were too many farmers, and did not have a program for farm purchases . Instead they used education to help the poor stretch their money further . Congress however demanded that the FSA help tenant farmers purchase farms, and purchase loans of $191 million were made, which were eventually repaid . A much larger program was $778 million in loans (at effective rates of about 1% interest) to 950,000 tenant farmers . The goal was to make the farmer more efficient so the loans were used for new machinery, trucks, or animals, or to repay old debts . At all times the borrower was closely advised by a government agent . Family needs were on the agenda, as the FSA set up a health insurance program and taught farm wives how to cook and raise children . Upward of a third of the amount was never repaid, as the tenants moved to much better opportunities in the cities . </P> <P> The FSA was also one of the authorities administering relief efforts in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico during the Great Depression . Between 1938 and 1945, under the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA) it oversaw the purchase of 590 farms with the intent of distributing land to working and middle class Puerto Ricans . </P> <P> The FSA resettlement communities appear in the literature as efforts to ameliorate the wretched condition of southern sharecroppers and tenants . However, those evicted to make way for the new settlers are virtually invisible in the historic record . The resettlement projects were part of larger efforts to modernize rural America . "Modernization" is a complex process whereby a relatively specific set of assumptions and behaviors make other assumptions and behaviors "wrong," both morally and pragmatically . The removal of former tenants and their replacement by FSA clients in the lower Mississippi alluvial plain--the Delta--reveals core elements of New Deal modernizing policies . The key concepts that guided the FSA's tenant removals were: the definition of rural poverty as rooted in the problem of tenancy; the belief that economic success entailed particular cultural practices and social forms; and the commitment by those with political power to gain local support . These assumptions undergirded acceptance of racial segregation and the criteria used to select new settlers . Alternatives could only become visible through political or legal action--capacities sharecroppers seldom had . However, in succeeding decades, these modernizing assumptions created conditions for Delta African Americans on resettlement projects to challenge white supremacy . </P> <P> The Documentary photography genre describes photographs that would work as a time capsule for evidence in the future or a certain method that a person can use for a frame of reference . Facts presented in a photograph can speak for themselves after the viewer gets time to analyze it . Documentary photography does not just stop there by taking pictures of human beings in poor conditions; it also runs in the veins of several aspects of society . Photographs of revolutions, accidents, or speeches all fall under that same style, as we could tell from the picture what went on because it simply was taken in order to let others be aware of what was happening during that period . </P>

The farm security administration of the u.s. dept. of agriculture