Washington Territory was intended to be an extension of the Eastern United States with small independent farms that would in time feed the nation and aid in driving the national economy. However, the homesteaders who arrived continued to struggle against the aridity and different ecosystem to no avail. An unusually wet decade in the late 19th century provided a glimmer of hope to the bootless rain-will-follow-the-plow theory. When the lands once again returned to dust, the crops failed and cattle choked. The introduction of new biology to this ecosystem worsened the state. Farms in Wenatchee, Quincy, and Wilbur were nowhere near fulfilling the Promised Land. Dreams of a second chance were shattered and farmers were left poor and helpless. The only people on their feet financially were the big businessmen in Spokane, even they were affected by the next terrible fate of the nation.

A woman stands outside a failed Quincy homestead.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, the entire country was in a state of helplessness, anxiety, and contention. Because the western states were indelibly dependent on government subsidies for support and growth, they suffered in its lack. The suicide rate rose from 13.9 to 17.4 per 100,000 between 1929 and 1932 (Watkins, 54), and "there were 250,000 fewer marriages in 1932 than in 1929" (Watkins, 55). The mythical yeoman farmer as the "ideal social unit for the preservation of democratic ideals" (Watkins, 340) died. The Homestead and Reclamation Acts only aided and abetted large-scale farming. Machinery improved to make small independent farms into economies of scale. In the west, "wage laborers, most of them migrants, accounted for nearly 50 percent of the total farm population of nearly a million" (Watkins, 341). The desperate age made wanderers out of workers. Farmers abandoned their plots and attempted to move to new ones.