In Louisiana, the earliest farming implements were simple hand tools, and before tractors and other mechanized equipment changed cotton picking, workers spent long hours in the hot sun chopping with hoes and digging with shovels. For cotton farmers in northeastern Louisiana, the years between 1900 and 1941 were generally marked by hardship because of the depressed cotton economy. Low commodity prices, periodic flooding, and labor problems had plagued the local cotton industry during the post-Civil War era, and greater challenges came in the early twentieth century. With the beginning of World War I in 1914, Louisiana cotton farmers temporarily lost their European markets and prices plunged to 5 cents a pound. After America's entry into the conflict, the federal government encouraged farmers to maximize agricultural productivity for the United States' war effort, but when hostilities ended in November 1918 a huge glut in commodities followed. This produced a regional depression that gripped the Deep South throughout the 1920s. Local economic stagnation was compounded by the devastation of the 1927 flood and the onset of the national depression in 1929, and economic hardship was widespread across the region.