They could not earn enough from farming to pay their mortgages.
During the Great Depression, farm foreclosures became a rising problem. Within 1929 and 1933, the third part of American farmers lost their farms. They were in deep debt, some holding a mortgage and others requiring credit to maintain production. The declining crop prices made it imposible for them to pay off their mortgage loans.
It was one of the first times war was being broadcast on live national television, and the horrors of war caused many in the American cities to protest the war and to stop sending young teens to what many thought was a war America had no place in.
