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What causes of the Great Depression were the most impactful
What causes of the Great Depression were the most impactful
The effect of great depression
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The Dust Bowl started during the Great Depression. During it, the dust blew everywhere unstoppable throughout northern Texas, south-western Oklahoma, and Kansas. A lot of these people moved to California in the hopes of a better life. Living during the Dust Bowl was horrible for the people. People suffered not only from the Great Depression, and also lived with tons of dirt flying everywhere, covering everyone. Almost everyone tried to cover the bottoms of their windows and doors with cloths to keep out dirt, but dust still managed to fly in. It was a very harsh life for those who lived during the Dust Bowl.
The Dust Bowl was the name given to the Great Plains area in the 1930s. Much of the region was an agricultural area and relied on it for most of their economy. Combined with The Great Depression and the dust storms, farmers in the Great Plains area were severely hurt. These farmers were seeking opportunity elsewhere near the Pacific where they were mistreated by the others already there. The mistreatment is a form of disenfranchisement, by excluding and segregating a group of people from the rest of society. The disenfranchisement of the Oklahoma farmers during the 1930s was caused by a combination of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression which led to the farmers being forced to move west where they were mistreated because there were not enough jobs.
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
2. Basically the Dust Bowl was named for the Great Plain region devastated by drought in 1930s depression-ridden America. Because the drought was struck between 1934 and 1937. It caused the soil was lacking the stronger root systems of grass as an anchor. So the wind can easily pick up the loose topsoil and swirled it into the dust cloud.
The Dust Bowl, a tragic era lasting from 1930 to 1939, was characterized by blinding dust storms. These dust storms were composed of strong winds that blew across dry, cultivated soil for hundreds of miles, which could remain active for ten hours or more (Hansen, 667). The storms actually had the potential to drag on for days on end. In 1939, for example, one storm stop blowing for more than one hundred hours.
During the Great Depression millions of families lost their jobs, homes, and depleted their savings in both urban and rural areas. In 1930, 15 million people became unemployed due to the Dust Bowl. Millions of families lost their jobs, homes, and depleted their savings in both urban and rural areas. Out of the 15 million, 0ne million citizens moved to California between 1935 and 1940 in search for work of work. This made the population increase from 1.3 million Americans to 5.7 million. For most Americans work was not the only issue families were faced with, but also shelter. Between the early 1930s and 1932 families were squeezed in with relatives, the unit densities sky-rocketed, and either defied eviction or found shelter in vacant buildings. Most could not even pay for normal rent housing. This left people finding shelter under bridges, in courts, and vacant public lands where they began to build their own shelter. Thus this is when Hoovervilles began and Government camps arrived soon after.
For many people in the 1930’s living conditions were not as adequate as they needed to be. The stock market had just crashed in 1928, and the US was in the midst of the Great Depression. Many people suffered from lack of money, and many others suffered from lack of food. One group of people who suffered greatly during this time period were the southern share croppers. Factors that caused the substandard living conditions of the southern share croppers in the 1930’s include lack of education, poor health care, and inadequate living facilities. The first factor that caused the substandard living conditions of the southern share croppers was their lack of education. There were several reasons the share croppers didn’t get the education they needed. One main reason was because many children didn’t go to school. Harold Walker writes that Southern cotton states ranked lower in rate of attendance for each student enrolled than any of the other states in the nation (4). A factor that contributed to this was their excessive mobility, which inhibited many children from going to school (Corder 27). It is common knowledge that any child who constantly moves around will not be able to attend school on a regular basis, and even if they go to a school when they get a chance they will be so far behind they would have a difficult time catching up. Another factor that impeded on a child’s attendance at school was the fact that they never went to school when there was cotton to be picked (Walker 8). This may not seem like a large task, but some times it could take weeks to pick all the cotton. These few weeks that a child spent picking cotton was valuable learning time, and missing it could put a child too far behind to catch up. Another reason share croppers didn’t get the education they needed was because many southern rural schools had short terms (Gentry 21). Because of this teachers would not be able to cover all of the material that they needed to cover, or they would have to rush through the material they did cover. A final reason the education of the southern cotton states was not as good as other states was because their teachers were not as good. This was reflected in the fact that the salaries of Southern teachers were not as high as the salaries of other teachers (Mckeon 98).
The Dust Bowl was a treacherous storm, which occurred in the 1930's, that affected the midwestern people, for example the farmers, and which taught us new technologies and methods of farming. As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land." The early thirties opened with prosperity and growth. At the time the Midwest was full of agricultural growth. The Panhandle of the Oklahoma and Texas region was marked contrast to the long soup lines of the Eastern United States.
The drought caused a lot of unfavorable conditions for farmers in the southwest. In Worster’s book he says “Few of us want to live in the region now. There is too much wind, dirt, flatness, space, barbed wire, drought, uncertainty, hard work…” (Worster 105). The droughts caused many unfavorable condition 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 of 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) Some of the direct effects of the droughts were that many of the farmers’ crops were damaged by deficient rainfall, high temperatures, and high winds, as well as insect infestations and dust storms that accompanied these conditions. What essentially happened was that the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor, so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called “black blizzards.” The constant dry weather caused crops to fail, leaving the plowed fields exposed to wind erosion. The effects of the drought happened so rapidly and progressively over time that
America is by far one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations worldwide. But to be such a powerhouse and beacon of some much opportunity, The United States is struggling to provide families with the sufficient amount of food. The parts of the country that lack adequate food supply are known as food deserts. The term food desert can be used when describing areas with limited resources and little to no access to fresh fruits, vegetables, meats and dairy products. Affordable and nutritious food is almost impossible to gain access to in food deserts. Approximately 2.3 million of Americans live over a mile away from a supermarket and do not have a car. This equates to about 2.2 percent of all U.S. households. These statistics are according the data provided by the United States Department of Agriculture. The reports also indicate that some of these areas include vast, rural parts of West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky, as well as urban areas like New York City, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles. The people residing in majority of these food deserts are predominantly African Americans.
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. This created what is known as the Dust Bowl Migration. During the 1930’s and 1940’s these people decided to travel west to California in search of work. However, they did not receive the welcoming they might have
Many of the people living in food deserts are people with low income. These low-income families often turn to the junk food provided at the convenience stores and fast food restaurants because it is all they can afford. Socio-economic status is a defining characteristic of food deserts. Food deserts are most commonly found in areas dominated by minorities and low-income families. Studies show that wealthy areas have about triple the amount of supermarkets as poor urban areas do. In addition to this, predominantly white communities have about 4 times as many grocery stores as predominantly black ones do. Studies also show that grocery stores in African-American neighborhoods are usually smaller and have less option when it comes to the selection of foods.
The Dust Bowl was "the darkest moment in the twentieth-century life of the southern plains," (pg. 4) as described by Donald Worster in his book "The Dust Bowl." It was a time of drought, famine, and poverty that existed in the 1930's. It's cause, as Worster presents in a very thorough manner, was a chain of events that was perpetuated by the basic capitalistic society's "need" for expansion and consumption. Considered by some as one of the worst ecological catastrophes in the history of man, Worster argues that the Dust Bowl was created not by nature's work, but by an American culture that was working exactly the way it was planned. In essence, the Dust Bowl was the effect of a society, which deliberately set out to take all it could from the earth while giving next to nothing back.
People living in poverty can be thought of as a “them” who can be easily ignored and forgotten; when, in reality, poverty can affect anyone. When people are living in poverty, sometimes it is not their fault. Often, unfortunate events that are out of someone’s control can set them up for failure. For example, the poverty rate for disabled adults from the age of 18-64 is 28.5%, while disabled 18-64 year olds only make up 7.7% of America’s population (Proctor, Semega, and Kollar 16). Therefore, poverty disproportionately affects disabled adults. The stories of those living in poverty are incredibly diverse, as Sasha Abramsky points out in The American Way of Poverty:
The Great Depression was a huge economic crash, which put countries into terrible debt and put people on the streets. During the Great Depression people were living in ghettos, they had no food to eat or jobs, however this was not the only issue during the 1930’s. The dust bowl had struck Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico which was the main source of crops at the time. This caused a massive drought which caused economic distress. When the United States “sneezed” the rest of the world caught a cold. All because of a tremendous dust storm.
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 and 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” is referring to a time during the 1930’s where the Great Plains region was drastically devastated by drought. All of the including 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. Therefore it was easy for the