Sunday, December 21, 2008

Henry Pratt's Memories XVIII

This is the final chapter in my serialization of Linda's 1965 history paper "MEMOIRS OF A
MICHIGAN FARMER, from the life of Henry B. Pratt"
 
These superficial changes were only indicitive of the vast changes that were to come in the world and farming. This was an era on the threshold. First came the boom of the Twenties, second the Depression of the Thirties, and third the surpluses of the present.*
 
The Depression came early for Henry B. Pratt. His two oldest brothers died in the Influenza epidemic of 1918 and the partnership they had with W.M.Pratt had to be dissolved at a time when the demand for farm products and, therefore, land were at a low ebb as a result of the end of World War I and the recovery of European farming. In 1926 W.M.Pratt died leaving Henry, then 25, with the responsibiliy of paying off the many debts his father had. Change in this case was rapid but hadly welcome.
 
* I'll bet she meant the excesses of the Sixties.
(emailed July 21)

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