Jennifer Ho
Ms. Parthenakis/A1
Language Arts 11/Sentence Outline
March 5, 2014
The Dirty Thirties
The Dust Bowl also referred to as the Dirty Thirties; was a time where many people in the United States struggled through a difficult time caused by their own mistake of farming choice. For eight years, simple acts of life such as breathing, eating, and taking a walk were no longer easy to do. The Dust Bowl belongs on the list of the top three, four, or five environmental catastrophes in world history," according to historian Donald Worster of the University of Kansas.
At first, things went the settlers' way. During World War I (1914-1918), there was a good amount of rain, and wheat prices were high. But after the war, prices collapsed. Then the Great Depression, which began in 1929, hit the area hard. Farms began to fail, and some people abandoned their land. This is one of the effects of the dust bowl. Stated by Mary Ann Zehr, "The Great Depression was a worldwide economic slump that occurred in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929 and ended in the late 1930s or early 1940s, depending on the country." (1)
The Dust Bowl took place, covering 100 million acres in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas. Around the 1940's countries got involved with WWII, like the USA. This increased the need for grain. Since there was more need for grain, the price increased in the market. In mid-September 2012 more than 65% of America was in drought but the most horrible drought in history is still in July 1934; around 80% of American was in drought.
Having dust in the air as you breathe is also something very hazardous. The more dust, the more people had trouble breathing. Dust would make people choke, and the dilicia particles ...
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...t “A normal storm that would arrive, it blocks the sun and makes it hard to see a few feet in front of you. These would come up from the horizon, and got called ‘black rollers’ or ‘dusters’.”(35)
To conclude, the droughts ended in the period of 1940. The Dust Bowl was much more complicated than a man-made environmental disaster. It was a huge catastrophe of the world you couldn’t even imagine happening in the present. It is known for the hundreds of storms killing everything in sight, especially children. McArthur points out "Although the rain brought back life to the prairie, the Dust Bowl remains a significance memory for all Americans. It was a learning experience for the Unites States, but a lesson that came with suffering.” (35). We are taking the experience of the Dust Bowl and bringing it into today’s techniques to avoid another environmental catastrophe.
To begin with, the “Dust Bowl” was one of the causes of economic fallout which resulted in the Great Depression. Because the “Dust Bowl” destroyed crops which were used to sell and make profit, the government had to give up a lot of money in order to try and help the people and land affected by the “Dust Bowl”. The “Dust Bowl” refers to a time during the 1930’s where the Great Plains region was drastically devastated by drought. All of the areas (Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico) all had little to no rainfall, light soil, and high winds, which were not a very suitable combination. The drought lasted from 1934 to 1937, most of the soil during the drought lacked the better root system of grass.
Gregory, James N. "Dust Bowl Legacies." University of Washington. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2013.
The Dust Bowl occurred for many reasons, most all our fault. “Some of the reasons that the Dust Bowl occurred were over-farming, livestock overgrazing, drought and poor farming practices.” (Dust Bowl facts and summary) Because of this negative experience it now teached us to be careful and now we know what to do to prevent this.“When drought struck from 1934 to 1937, the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor.”("Dust Bowl Facts and summary") That's really bad for the farmers because then the wind can easily pick up the dirt off the
The Dust Bowl in the 1930s was a very horrific event in the Southern Plains region of the United States. This was a period of severe windstorms & dust-storms that would blow over hundreds of miles. This stripped the soil of nutrients, and damaged the ecology and agriculture of these American lands. The 2012 drought in the Central Great Plains was a period that lasted only 4 months, through May to August, that eclipsed the record of the Dust Bowl, for the driest period. The Dust Bowl and the 2012 drought compare and contrast in many ways.
For various reason the Dust Bowl was deadly for livestock, including choking on dust, and starvation or mass culling of jackrabbits and later cattle to stabilize prices (The Great Plow Up). FDR 's New Deal unintentionally made society and especially farmers begin to rely on government in times of crisis. The Dust storms only got worse as the 1930s progressed. They were particularly demoralizing and frightening for many people but for the children the dust particles often lead breathing issues such as pneumonia. Women in particular were in a constant losing battle as the dust always came inside building and covered everything. In the garden which they needed to feed their family it was almost impossible to grow anything. Face coverings became a necessity to escape the blinding, unbreathable air found especially in the worst of storms. Depression both psychological and economic became commonplace, leading to many outstanding debts, foreclosures, and
...t Bowl. Unfortunately the circumstances in the Great Plains all came to a head resulting in a horrific ten years for citizens of the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl caused government and people to look at farming practices and to evaluate their output. These policies resulted in overproduction of crops causing the prices to fall. The conclusion of World War I and countries that stopped importing foods added to the pain the farmers were already feeling. Yet with the establishment of government policies such as the Federal Relief Administration and the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act and with drought coming to an end, the Dust Bowl came to an end. The American people knew that they needed to do everything that was possible to end the Dust Bow. Tom Joad, the lead character in The Grapes Wrath best sums it up “ I know this... a man got to do what he got to do.”
The “Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s”, was written by Donald Worster, who admits wanted to write the book for selfish reasons, so that he would have a reason o visit the Southern Plains again. In the book he discusses the events of the “dirty thirties” in the Dust Bowl region and how it affected other areas in America. “Dust Bowl” was a term coined by a journalist and used to describe the area that was in the southern planes in the states of Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, between the years of 1931 and 1939. This area experienced massive dust storms, which left dust covering everything in its wake. These dust storms were so severe at times that it made it so that the visibility in the area was so low to where people
Farming was the major growing production in the United States in the 1930's. Panhandle farming attached many people because it attracted many people searching for work. The best crop that was prospering around the country was wheat. The world needed it and the United States could supply it easily because of rich mineral soil. In the beginning of the 1930's it was dry but most farmers made a wheat crop. In 1931 everyone started farming wheat. The wheat crop forced the price down from sixty-eight cents/ bushels in July 1930 to twenty-five cents/ bushels July 1931. Many farmers went broke and others abandoned their fields. As the storms approached the farmers were getting ready. Farmers increased their milking cowherds. The cream from the cows was sold to make milk and the skim milk was fed to the chickens and pigs. When normal feed crops failed, thistles were harvested, and when thistles failed, hardy souls dug up soap weed, which was chopped in a feed mill or by hand and fed to the stock. This was a backbreaking, disheartening chore, which would have broken weaker people. But to the credit of the residents of the Dust Bowl, they shouldered their task and carried on. The people of the region made it because they knew how to take the everyday practical things, which had been used for years and adapt them to meet the crisis.
(Worster 105). The droughts caused many unfavorable conditions throughout the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. Thus, roughly one-third of Texas and Oklahoman farmers left their homes and headed to California in search of migrant work. The droughts during the 1930s are a drastically misrepresented factor in the Dust Bowl considering “the 1930s droughts were, in the words of a Weather Bureau scientist, the worst in the climatological history of the country.” (Worster 232)
The area of severe wind erosion, soon known as the Dust Bowl, compromised a section of the wheat belt near the intersection of Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. ”(Gregory, 11). Along with Gregory, John Steinbeck in his book, The Harvest Gypsies, and Debra Weber in her book, Dark Sweat, White Gold, also write about these events, and in particular the people who were affected by it. The Dust Bowl had ruined any chance of farmers in those regions being able to farm, because of that they were forced to relocate to be able to survive.
Imagine standing outside trying to farm your dying crops. All of a sudden, the sky gets dark. You look up and see a big, black cloud heading straight towards your town. You attempt to seek shelter, but it is too late. Cars come to a complete stop, and people rush to get cover. The cloud of dirt sweeps into your small town, and you can no longer see anything but only feel the gritty dirt blowing against your skin. This occurrence is what people experienced during the Dust Bowl. In the historical fiction book, Out of the Dust, the author, Karen Hesse, describes the hardships that Billie Jo and her family faced during the worst years of the Dust Bowl. Hesse depicts the effects of the dust storms, reasons for the occurrence of the dust storms,
One of the factors in the dust bowl was the drought. These farmers are now planting drought resistant strains of corn and wheat. “We have really widespread irrigation use, which allows many farmers to buffer the effects of drought more than they would’ve been able to do in the 1930s.” ("Lieberman") Irrigation use is huge now. SO many farmers use it. Farmers when the dust bowl happened would not have been able to buffer the effects of drought. This is a farming practice that has been very important. “Fortunately, the next major drought will not cause a second dust bowl, as we are now better able to prevent soil erosion.” ("Lieberman") We are now better able to prevent soil erosion because of new farming practices implanted since the Dust Bowl.”Poor agricultural practices and years of sustained drought caused the Dust Bowl.” ("About the Dust Bowl" This is now preventable because we have new farming practices since the dust
The “Dust Bowl Odyssey” presented an initial perspective of why families migrated from drought-ridden, Dust Bowl, areas to California. Edward Carr cautions, “Interpretation plays a necessary part in establishing the facts of history, and because no existing interpretation is wholly objective, on interpretation is a good as another, and the facts of history are in principle not amendable to objective interpretation” (Carr, 1961, p. 31). Historians had to separate the prejudices, assumptions, and beliefs of the times in order to have a more objective reasoning of the migration. The migration had valid evidence that supported against the theory of the Dust Bowl being the only contributor. Rather there were other historical contributions to
The Roaring Twenties approached and the citizens in Colorado were facing rough times. In 1920, many people such as farm owners, manufacturers, and even miners were having a hard time making a living due to an economic downfall. The farmers especially, where facing the toughest of times. The price of various farm-grown goods like wheat, sugar beets, and even cattle was dropping because their goods were no longer needed by the public. Wheat had dropped in price from $2.02 in 1918 to $0.76 by the time 1921 came around. Sadly, the land that they were using to grow wheat became dry and many farmers had to learn to grow through “dryland farming” which became very popular in the eastern plains from 1910 to 1930 (Hard Times: 1920 - 1940). Apple trees began to die due to the lack of desire for apples, poor land, and decreased prices. Over the course of World War I, the prices of farm goods began to increase slowly. Farmers were not the only one facing this economic hardship while others in big cities were enjoying the Roaring Twenties.
...ture. So, in my opinion, the only way for the Dust Bowl to have been curtailed sooner would have been for the people there to stop "breaking" the land all together and let mother nature take over and fix herself. Of course, that would be asking the impossible since it would mean the plains people would have to give up, and lose to the capitalistic society of which they were trying to keep up with. Ultimately, every remedy that was attempted merely assisted in the growth of the Dust Bowl and of consumerism itself. Droughts and famine will come and go during our time here on earth, but we must learn to look to the earth for the remedy and give back to the earth what is rightfully hers-for capitalism cannot fill the needs of human life without the resources of the land.