 While the urban United States experienced an economic boom during the 1920s , the agricultural sector of the country experienced a depression . <unk> of European agriculture by World War I had produced high prices for farm commodities , and it had been thought that Europe 's recovery would be slow and that the high prices would persist . This gave rise to a bubble in farmland prices , which burst when the rapid postwar recovery of European agriculture drove commodity prices down again . At the same time , increasing mechanization reduced the need for farm labor , pushing agricultural wages downward and rural unemployment upward . Madison and St. Leonard 's parish suffered from this agricultural depression and from the Great Depression of the 1930s . During this time , the parish 's population remained more or less stable : in 1918 , it consisted of 440 individuals ; in 1929 , <unk> . 
