Concerning the first Federal statutes in the United States on the subject of
bankruptcy, questions specific to benefits for farmers and fishermen were
left unanswered, as these professions were barely even addressed by the bankruptcy
laws. The Bankruptcy Act of 1898 is generally recognized as the first major
comprehensive piece of bankruptcy legislation in America, and was a critical
creation on Congress’s part because it authorized the creation of the U.S. Bankruptcy
Courts.
While its name does not explicitly cite the
topic of bankruptcy, questions of whether or not many farms would go
under as a result of the Great Depression were firmly responded to in the
negative by the Farm Credit Act of 1933. The Act, signed into law by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, offered several forms of relief for farmers in jeopardy
of losing the rights to their land, including the extension of emergency loans,
temporary low interest rates, and options for mortgage refinancing.
However, as was often the case prior to the
20th and 21st centuries, bankruptcy laws were often short-lived or
required renewal to prevent their expiration. The Farm Credit Act, the Frazier-Lemke Act and
other legislation of the Depression Era were intentionally passed as
impermanent interventions on the part of farmers, fishermen and the like. Thus,
continuing with the theme of bankruptcy questions, over the decades and until
fairly recently, the biggest uncertainty was that of how long safeguards for
farmers would last.