The Great Depression was brutal. But it would have been even worse had it not been for the fact that the US was still very much an agricultural country. Don't dig up numbers shsowing the GP was not that dependent on agriculture. It may or may not have been.
Regardless of the numbers, a great many people, even though they had left the farm for work in industry, had kin still on the farm and they could go back to the farm for food and a warm place to sleep.
Ask me how I know. I am old enough to remember it well.
In the coming depression, many of the family farms are gone. Either grown up in timber or grazing land and very few city dwellers have kinfolk on the farm to take them in and feed them.
I hope all who live in the country have a means to protect themselves from what is coming.....unless we end this madness.
This is why, 9 years ago, I moved from Seattle to a 12 acre (now 32) hobby farm in rural KY.
But for the Camp Fire which displaced me from Paradise, CA, I’d still be up north in an agrarian region. Always took some comfort being there with my new family the past eleven years. We had so many dear friends.
Now I’m back in Orange County, which is, to my surprise, just as wracked in panic as anywhere else. Far more dependent on the system holding together.
So nice seeing you.