Scenes such as this outside of the New York Stock Exchange were common throughout the country following the 1929 stock market crash. Despite FIS’s success during World War I, plummeting cotton prices and a struggling economy signaled trouble at the start of the Great Depression. FIS members who profited off the wartime cotton prices could not continue the lifestyles they had lived during the war because their profits fell as prices decreased. This led many farmers to give up and move to cities to find other work, leaving FIS with decreasing membership and depleted funds.