The interwar period is particularly significant for the economic development of Greece. The ten-year war and the arrival of refugees after the Asia Minor disaster are two of the main factors that forged the conditions of economic changes during that period. The Agrarian Reform, that is the distribution of large landed properties in Thessaly and in the New Territories (i.e. Epirus, Macedonia, Thrace, Crete and the islands) to landless farmers, had been a claim associated with the social radicalism of the beginning of the century. At the same time it had been enacted during the period of national split by the revolutionary government of Thessaloniki, but virtually it did not materialise. Finally, and under the pressure of settling the refugees, land distribution began to be implemented. The settlement of refugees in large urban centres had yet another effect on the economic processes of that period. It contributed to the growth of industrial production, to the extent that refugees constituted available low-cost workforce. The positive economic developments in all areas of production resulting from the currency stabilisation and the policy pursued by the Venizelos government during 1928-32, were suspended because of the repercussions of the international economic crisis in 1929. In Greece, as in the U.S.A. and the countries of western Europe, state intervention and protectionism led to a gradual economic recovery. This course was interrupted by World War II.