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Life during the great depression essay apex
Life during the great depression era
Life during the great depression essay apex
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Imagine this, you are walking back from school, you are in the middle of nowhere no one beside you and suddenly the ground begins to shake, like an earthquake but even worse. A big cloud of dust begins to roll over the hills, running towards you at 60 miles per hour. You try to run but in your head you know you will never make it. You stop and look for a place to hide, there is nothing. You stick your head in your backpack and lie on the cold hard ground. You feel the stampede coming closer and closer. You hold your breath and begin to fly with the dust. You scream hoping for a chance to breath and stop and live, but no, you continue choking and flying till the storm passes. I am one of the many people who was in the dust bowl during the
The thirties were a time of the Great Depression. Everyone was poor. People who had had riches in abundance not one year earlier were living on the streets. It would take years for America to recover, and the road to get there was not very smooth.
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, 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.
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
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.
In the book Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s the author, Donald Worster, makes the argument that the Dust Bowl was a mostly a direct result of farmer’s methods and misuse of the fragile plains environment. However, there were many other largely contributing factors to the Dust Bowl. While the farmer’s methods played a role, other factors such as economic decline, unusually high temperatures, an extended drought accompanied by and economic depression, and the resulting wind erosion were all factors that help explain The Dust Bowl.
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.
In 1929 the Great Depression occurred that sent a panic through the country and a sharp decline in the United States economy. This decline accompanied an increase in homeless people. Although the United States had seen its’ share of homeless, the 1930s-1940s marked the peak. Many people believed the government would provide assistance but were let down. These homeless created Shantytowns to live in and called them Hoovervilles. These Hoovervilles contained awful hygienic conditions that would put many people at risk. The Great Depression brought along hundreds and thousands of homeless people and shantytowns, which was blamed on the government but has shaped
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.
Chase, I enjoyed Ken Burns’ The Dust Bowl as well, and I believe it was for reasons that you brought up as the music and photos from the era used in its production. While reading your statement about the documentary’s “emotional power” really caught my attention and reminded me of a quote from Siobhan McHugh’s article. In her article, McHugh states that the tone of a person’s voice and the way that they tell their histories is something that a paper transcript cannot convey to its audience (McHugh, 188). Your post on The Dust Bowl documentary and the oral histories used by Burns reminded me of this quote because, as you said, the use of these personal histories is supposed to strike emotion in its audience. With videos, music, and oral history
The Dust Bowl of North America refers to a catastrophe in the early 1930's when vast areas of the Midwestern and Western farm lands of America became wastelands. This occurred due to a series of dry years which coincided with the extension of agriculture in unsuitable lands. Droughts and dust storms caused by poor tillage practices devastated farms and ranches of the Great Plains; therefore, causing a great exodus of its inhabitants to other, more fertile, lands. The problem had become so great that a nation wide effort was made to resolve the problem. Beginning in 1935, extensive efforts were made by both federal and state governments to develop adequate programs for soil conservation and for the rehabilitation of the dust bowl. Eventually, thanks to government aid, farming became possible again in the Dust Bowl; consequently, farmers have learnt many valuable lessons from this dilemma.
The Industrial Revolution in America began to develop in the mid-eighteen hundreds after the Civil War. Prior to this industrial growth the work force was mainly based in agriculture, especially in the South (“Industrial Revolution”). The advancement in machinery and manufacturing on a large scale changed the structure of the work force. Families began to leave the farm and relocate to larger settings to work in the ever-growing industries. One area that saw a major change in the work force was textile manufacturing. Towns in the early nineteen hundreds were established around mills, and workers were subjected to strenuous working conditions. It would take decades before these issues were addressed. Until then, people worked and struggled for a life for themselves and their families. While conditions were harsh in the textile industry, it was the sense of community that sustained life in the mill villages.
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...