Stories Behind the Movies, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Chapter 3

As if the economic disaster were not enough, the American Midwest was hit with unprecedented drought. Food supplies were diminished as formerly fertile fields became dust bowls. And in the south, once-productive cotton fields were transformed into eroded wastelands.

Sometimes private parties offered cheap or free food. People stood in “bread lines” that stretched many blocks, only to be disappointed by the time it was "their turn." Food, in increasingly short supplies, was already gone. These were desperate times.

Before he became President, Herbert Hoover was the “United States Food Administrator.” Although he tried to distribute food throughout the country, as he had provided wheat to America’s allies during World War I, Hoover could not do his job the way he wanted to do it. There simply wasn’t enough to go around.