Throughout the book Letters From the Dust Bowl by Caroline Henderson, there was a common theme of survival. Everyone had a different way of coping with the disastrous events that came during The Great Depression. Some people had hope for the future, while others had given in to the dust and lost all hope or decided to leave. One of the only things that influenced people to stay, was the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), who offered checks to farmers willing to stop farming portions of their land. It was, “[I]n reality the only thing that [had] saved the country side from complete abandonment and the small towns from ruin,” (Henderson 158). Most of these people survived off of their hope and the belief that life would get better. As the catastrophic dust storms continued on, some farmers and their families held on to the optimism that the storms would quit eventually, the rain would come and the plants would thrive once again. Every week that passed with the horizons still clouded, their hope for the future slowly diminished. “There [was] a good many people still clinging to their little homes” (Henderson 163), and these people were devoted and stubborn. They had a positive outlook into the future, and didn’t think about abandoning the lives and the land they had committed to for years. They wanted …show more content…
Some people chose to held on, while others gave up hope in the first few months, or moved away. “[The] people there [couldn’t] quite believe yet in a hopeless climatic change which would deprive them permanently of the gracious gift of rain.” (Henderson 157). Life was very hard and miserable for the people who had mentally given up. They had a very negative outlook, which made daily life even harder because they had no hope for the future, which gave you no will or motivation to go on. It would have been much easier for these people if they kept a positive mindset, even in the times of
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.
A lack of food would seem to be the bottom line where families finally understood that there was nothing in the Great Plains except for hardship and death of crops along with livestock. In the Ken Burns documentary it states “convinced that the storms were a freak accident, that the rains would soon return, residents could not imagine that they had entered a battle that would last a decade.” This was the mind set of many farms during that time, that the storms was an accident and that it would not last, however, they were proved to be wrong and the issues
...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
The 1930 's was a time of despair and devastation, leaving millions in ruins. America was at an all time low during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The stock market had crashed and a severe drought turned into a disastrous storm. The 1930 's effected the nation and nobody knew the answer to the million dollar question, what caused Americas downfall? Historians have tried hard to solve the impossible puzzle and many have their theories, but the exact cause of the Dust Bowl continues to be unknown. At the core of understanding the Dust Bowl is the question of whose fault it was. Was it the result of farmers tilling land beyond what the environment could bear, or is it just a natural fluctuation in the atmosphere. These questions have
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.
The book The Worst Hard Time describes my experience on trying to get through this book but somehow almost made me grateful that even as difficult and exhausting as it was in actuality there was nothing worse, difficult or exhausting than living through the dust bowl storms in the 1930’s which luckily I did not do. If you ever feel ungrateful or depressed about something in your life just read this book and you will know that most problems now a days in the United States don’t compare to the hardships and loss of loved ones who died during the dust storms in the 1930s. The people who inhabited the dust bowl area which consisted of Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado and Kansas where sold an Idea of the American dream of owning property
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.
During the Great Depression, or the “dirty thirties”, the land had changed and definitely not for the better seeing that “severe drought and high winds degraded [the] farmland” (Gale, 2008). Although it was not nature’s fault for the Dust Bowl; the “years of overproduction and poor farming techniques had stripped the land of protective topsoil and left it vulnerable” to all patterns of western weather (Gale, 2008).
In Children of the Dust Bowl, Jerry Stanley reveals an inspiring story to the rise to success for the Oklahoma native children who were affected by the conditions of the Dust Bowl.
First the northern plains were hit by the dry spell, but by July the southern plains were in the drought. Because of the late planting and early frost, much of the wheat was damaged when the spring winds of 1932 began to blow. The region was blasted by a horrible dirt storm, which killed almost all the wheat. Although the dirt storms were fewer in 1934, it was the year, which brought the Dust Bowl national attention. A severe storm blew dirt from Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. In spite of the terrific storm in the year 1934 there was a satisfying break from the blowing dirt and tornadoes of the previous year. But nature had another trick up her sleeve, the year was extremely hot with new records being made. Before the year had run its course, hundreds of people in Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas had died from the heat. The weather in the Dust Bowl again made the national headlines. A description of this storm of coming was made by a farmer:" The storm causes a tremendous amount of damage and suffering mentally and physically some of the conditions were animals dying from dust in the lungs and people developing dust pneumonia.” A giant dust storm engulfs Oklahoma. These storms destroyed vast areas of the Great Plains farmland. The methods of fighting the dust were as many and varied as were the means of finding a way to get something to eat. Canned foods had became the only way anybody could eat. Every possible crack was plugged, sheets were placed over windows and blankets were hung behind doors. Often the places were so tightly plugged against the dust that the houses became extremely hot and stuffy. Men, women and children stayed in their houses and tied handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths. When they dared to leave, they added goggles to protect their eyes. Houses were shut tight, cloth was wedged in the cracks of the doors and windows but still the fine silt forced its way into houses, schools
We all have challenges in our life, whether it is struggling with moving every couple months, or surviving through a storm. In some way, we all overcame it otherwise by not doing anything and staying strong, pushing through and doing everything you can, or fleeing and starting over. During the Great Depression, there was a tragic event that filled the sky with dust. The farmers had to go through a drought and dust storms. There was no water for the crops to grow and animals died.
The Dust Bowl existed, in its full quintessence, concurrently with the Great Depression during the 1930's. Worster sets out in an attempt to show that these two cataclysms existed simultaneously not by coincidence, but by the same culture, which brought them about from similar events. "Both events revealed fundamental weaknesses in the traditional culture of America, the one in ecological terms, the other in economic." (pg. 5) Worster proposes that in American society, as in all others, there are certain accepted ways of using the land. He sums up the "capital ethos" of ecology into three simply stated maxims: nature must be seen as capital, man has a right/obligation to use this capital for constant self-advancement, and the social order should permit and encourage this continual increase of personal wealth (pg. 6) It is through these basic beliefs that Worster claims the plainsmen ignored all environmental limits, much ...
Being a kid in Oklahoma during the dust bowl wasn’t the greatest. Every morning no matter the weather conditions the kids would have to milk their cows, and feed all the farm animals (A Child's Life During the Dust Bowl). The walks to and from school were never easy. They would walk several miles, and it would always be very windy. Sometimes the kids would have no choice but to walk backwards because the wind was that bad. Pneumonia was also a problem for the children. Since food was also scarce in the dust bowl, children suffered watching their parents starve. Moving away from the dust bowl didn’t mean life would get easier. Many people moved to California, and they were given a nickname “Okies.” Most of the kids would get teased because they were an Okie. The Okies were called dumb because they didn’t have the opportunity to go to school as much because of the dust storms (A Child's Life During the Dust Bowl). In my opinion if I was kid living in the dust bowl I would probably want to kill myself. I would not be able to handle it. It seems like there was nothing to look forward to and each day was another struggle. I can barely go just a few hours without anything to eat. Knowing that they had to eat the same things every day, and always would end up chewing on some dust makes me happy with the way my lif...
A magnanimous amount of motivation for the tenant farmers was generally found in the self, in an individualistic manner. As "gentle (winds) followed the rain clouds," furthering the magnitude of the dust storms, the survival of the farmers and their families soon became doubtful. The men would sit in "the doorways of their houses; their hands were busy with sticks and little rocks... (as they) sat still--thinking--figuring." The adversity represented by the weather was hindered by the idea that man could triumph over nature--over the machine--and retain a sense of self-identity.