July Fifteenth

Thomas Craven, a critic who championed Regionalism, called this lithograph "the very essence of fertility…the portrait of America's most valuable wealth. No dust bowl here, no starved cattle or skulls bleaching on cracked surfaces." Wood's images of farming ignore the massive displacement of farmers due to the Dust Bowl and mechanization. Between 1920 and 1950 the number of American farmers decreased by almost nine million, as people left the Great Plains for opportunities elsewhere.