Stumbled on a census map from 1950 that made me rethink everything

I was digging through old government archives online last night, just killing time, and I found a census map from 1950 for my small town. The population was only 1,200 back then, but the number of people listed as farmers was over 60 percent. Now it's barely 5 percent, and the town has grown to 8,000 people. It got me wondering if there was some coordinated push to move people off the land, or if it just happened naturally. Has anyone else run into old records that made you question the official story of how things changed?

2 comments

2 Comments

park.robin10d ago

Honestly I think you're reading WAY too much into this. People left the farms because it was HARD work that barely paid. My grandpa was a farmer back then and he'd tell you straight up he couldn't wait to get his kids into town jobs. There wasn't no conspiracy. It was simple economics. Tractors got bigger, land got consolidated, and fewer hands were needed to grow the same amount of food. Plus people wanted refrigerators and TVs and indoor plumbing which was a lot easier to have in a town than out on some muddy farm. The census numbers just reflect people making choices for themselves, not some shadowy push.

jessicac2810d ago

Exactly, @park.robin nailed it, my grandpa said the same thing about trading a mule for a warm toilet seat any day lol.