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.
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.
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
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
The dust bowl was the worst environmental disaster in the U.S history. Farming practices changed as a result of the Dust bowl. Farmers changed how they plow / take care of their field.There are also many conservation programs and measures implemented as a result and many farmers have fixed drought problems so their soil does not get to dry.
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.
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 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.
The stock market crash was a result of rapid growth, and banks and lenders overextending loans and investments. Overextending loans and investments resulted in factories shutting down, banks closing, people losing their life savings and millions of Americans out of work, thousands starving and homeless. The rural areas of America were much luckier than the urban in that they were not hit as hard by the depression, they were still able to grow their crops, raise their animals and continue on with life as normal for the most part. In 1930 a severe drought struck America which only helped to make the Great Depression worse for all of America, including those in rural areas with farms as it effected their ability to grow crops and water their animals. The droughts effected those in the Great Plains and their surrounding areas the most. For years the lands had been stripped of its natural vegetation and soil had been overworked to produce crops, mainly wheat in large amounts. Overworking the land caused it to lose its vitality, leaving no sod to hold the sand or powdery dirt down. Without rain these problems were just exasperated, vegetation was unable to grow back to replace what was
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 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
The United States was in trouble in 1929. This year, during its already struggling economy, the stock market crashed. This one event created a domino effect, and other troubling events followed. One example of the tragedies was the drought, and the dust storms. James Gregory, the author of American Exodus writes, The most spectacular feature of the drought, the awesome dust storms which blackened the sky over much of the central United States on numerous occasions during 1933 and 1935, actually affected relatively few farms in the Southwestern states.
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.
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,
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