How Did The Dust Bowl Affect The Economy

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Presently, the United States is considered to be the country with the largest economy. According to the latest World Bank figures "[The United States] represents a quarter share of the global economy (24.3%)", but the country hasn't always been financially superior. From 1929 to 1939, America had been going through the Great Depression, where people all over were struggling financially. In 1929, the Stock Market crashed, having a dreadful impact on all Americans, starting the Great Depression; this was then worsened by the Dust Bowl in the Midwest making life hard, and affecting the economic prosperity for all Americans. During the Roaring Twenties, life was great: the economy was increasing rapidly, and people could “buy now, pay later,” yet it wasn’t always going to stay that way. In 1929 approximately four million Americans invested in stocks using credit. …show more content…

As a result of these droughts, along with inadequate farming practices, topsoil became dust. Intense winds carried 300 million tons of dirt across America; this was the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl doubtlessly made life more difficult than it already was. The Dust Bowl destroyed around 100 million acres of land, ruining crops and leaving 3 million farmers unemployed. If that wasn’t already awful enough, the dust storms suffocated livestock and wildlife to death, there were plagues of grasshoppers, crickets, spiders, and centipedes. As for humans, according to Avis D. Carlson, “The impact [from the Dust Storm] is like a shovelful of fine sand fling against the face.” due to the dust carried across the country. The dust bowl also led to many cases of dust pneumonia; where the lungs can’t function accordingly because of thick layers of dust that lay deep in the

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