1919 farm crisis shows some bailouts hard to undo Asset prices plunge and a panic sweeps through international markets. The crisis threatens the livelihood and savings of millions of Americans. Congress enacts sweeping government intervention, putting aside faith in free markets to heal themselves. Sound familiar? So went the farm crisis of 1919. When the U.S. bailed out the agriculture sector in the early 1930s, it forever changed the business of farming. While today's banking industry interventions are different in many ways, economists say it is worth noting that "emergency" Depression-era measures meant to protect farming families from short-term market swings have become near-permanent support at taxpayer expense. "Probably no one at the time expected that almost 80 years later, very similar programs would still be on the books," said Scott Irwin, chair of agricultural marketing department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The interventions of the 1930s succeeded in their goal of smoothing out the farm sector's booms and busts, said Neil Harl, an agricultural economics professor at Iowa State University. But once government ensured stability, it wasn't easy to step back and let the market find equilibrium on its own, he said. Farm programs have such a strong political backing that last year's farm bill passed with veto-proof support and U.S. support for farm subsidies caused international trade talks to collapse this summer....I've been watching gov't, from within and from the outside, for 35 years and I've yet to see a significant program permanently halted. Once a group starts suckling at the gov't tit, no politician has the cojones to jerk it out of their mouths and tell them to get their own damn nourishment.