In his award-winning account of the devastating environmental and cultural effects of the Dust Bowl that enveloped America’s Midwest in the 1930’s, Timothy Egan attributes the disaster to the collective cause of reckless man-made agricultural practices, even as he surveys the tragic individual stories of the people who suffered from it. He argues that the combined effects of drought and a heat wave in the early 1930s, and man’s hubris and environmental ignorance and irresponsibility throughout the decade caused the Dust Bowl, and yet finds compassion for the small homestead farmer and the weak and powerless families who inhabited the region and lived through the disaster rather than picking up stakes and moving on. His story is a traumatic …show more content…
history of the relationship between man and nature. In this brief paper, the book’s discussion of this theme will be considered and analyzed through a summary of the tales Egan considers and the arguments he musters in support of his thesis. Egan begins his account of the Dust Bowl by pointing out that the initial and actual cause of the Dust Bowl was over-farming by the many, mostly family, farmers who inhabited the region.
Farmers overturned every available square acre of the vast great plain to plant wheat, without realizing and perhaps without caring that they were thereby removing the grassland covering that had historically held the soil in place and gave it nutrients needed for fertility. Therefore, when the drought and harsh weather hit in the early 1930s – weather that Egan calls “perhaps the most violent and extreme on earth” at the time (p. 2) – the soil was left cracked and devastated. Having spent so much of their effort turning over the land by plowing it under to plant crops, Egan argues that when the heat and wind and drought occurred, the people found that “the earth turned on them” (p. 2). Great plumes of dust kicked up in the rampaging winds that swept across the plains, suffocating people and livestock alike. This caused people, during the time of the Great Depression, when almost a quarter of the population were unemployed, to double down, plowing more land and planting more crops in order to try to survive the economic hard times. A downward spiral of sorts resulted, with the uncooperative weather leading to crop failure and more dust, and the people growing …show more content…
hungrier. Egan summarizes the horror of the resulting decade by describing how cows that had died by suffocation were found to have their insides coated with dust when they were cut open.
Children died of a disease the doctors called “dust pneumonia” – that is when they were not given away by parents who could not afford to feed them. These and other effects of the impenetrable dust in the air during the massive storms were found devastating because they involved the threat of death in the most natural of actions, breathing. The Dust Bowl therefore changed the way people related to their environment, to their own health, and to their fellow man. Egan even argues that such a simple act as shaking hands was prohibited because of the unexpected effects of the dryness, which caused static electricity that could knock both men down. He claims that those who lived through it described the Dust Bowl as worse in its nightmarish effects than similar horrors such as the Flu Epidemic of 1918 and either World War I or II (pp. 5-6). His book is an account of the recollections of those people as both a type of people’s history and an environmental
polemic. Amidst his discussion of the horrors of the Dust Bowl, Egan juxtaposes two basic needs, the need for compassion for those who are powerless in the wake of natural disaster, and the need for environmental practices that are more in line with earth’s capacity and power. In regard to the need for compassion for the powerless, Egan outlines the stories of many people who were either unwilling or unable to move away from the Dust Bowl but forced instead to live through it. One example of such a case is found by a judge in Texas who was assigned the case of helping a young widow in need of assistance. Egan describes the scene as follows, based on accounts given in interviews: Bankrupted by the wheat bust, the woman had lost her husband to dust pneumonia, leaving her without a man or a penny to her name. Her children were hungry, dirty, coughing, dressed in torn, soiled clothes. Their house was nearly buried, and inside centipedes and black widows had a run of the place. The worst thing was the wind. It never stopped. (p. 178) Egan pointed out that in such cases, the people often, as the woman did herself, “snapped.” They went mad. The effects of the Dust Bowl were therefore psychologically as well as economically and bodily damaging. He claims that the remembrance of such incidents by those who lived through it were cause for long-lasting damage, and suggests that only through continued compassion can we overcome both historical and current tragedies of this type. Concerning the need for improved environmental policy, Egan describes the efforts of the government to encourage planting of grasslands again (p. ), as well as other policies such as the killing of weakened herds to preserve grazing property (145) as approaches taken that eventually led to restoration of the lands viability. He calls these actions “triage” – and suggests that, for example, in regard to the killing of herds, “The plan was to get farm animals off the land. Period. Shrink the expansion” (p. 146). While he admits in the final chapter of his book that the return of the rains was the ultimate resolution to the problem, he builds a convincing case that in the absence of the rains, the devastating agricultural practices of the population made the situation worse. He suggests that this is all the more tragic because of the trauma that was inflicted on the population as a result of those actions. In conclusion, Egan’s book is a reminder of the need for humility in approaching both the powerful earth and man’s tenuous community upon it.
Egan notes, “No group of people took a more dramatic leap in lifestyle or prosperity, in such a short time, than wheat farmers on the Great Plains” (Egan 42). The revenue from selling wheat far exceeded the cost of producing the wheat, so the large profit attracted people to produce more and more wheat. On top of the high profit from wheat, the Great War caused the price of wheat to rise even more. The supply of wheat rose with the price, but Egan points to information to demonstrate that the rapid increase in production can lead to overproduction, which is damaging to the land. Also, the invention of the tractor also lead to overproduction of the land by creating the ability to dramatically cut the time it took to harvest acres. When the prices for wheat began to fall due to overproduction, this caused the farmers to produce even more output to be able to make the same earnings as when the prices were higher. The government also played a part in promoting the overproduction of the land. The Federal Bureau of Soils claimed that, “The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possessed. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted, that cannot be used up” (Egan 51). Egan points to factors such as a high profit margin, the Great War, tractors, increased outputs when wheat prices fell, and governmental claims that caused the people to overproduce the land of the Great Plains. Egan then gives examples of how the overproduction destroyed the land. Egan explains that the farmers saw their only way out was to plant more wheat. This overproduction tore up the grass of the Great Plains, thus making the land more susceptible to the severe dust storms of the Dust
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 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 over its time that it occurred affected many things living or nonliving.
...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 nature of the Southern Plains soils and the periodic influence of drought could not be changed, but the technological abuse of the land could have been stopped. This is not to say that mechanized agriculture irreparably damaged the land-it did not. New and improved implements such as tractors, one-way disk plows, grain drills, and combines reduced plowing, planting, and harvesting costs and increased agricultural productivity. Increased productivity caused prices to fall, and farmers compensated by breaking more sod for wheat. At the same time, farmers gave little thought to using their new technology in ways to conserve the
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.
(Worster12) but neglects the fact that at the time of the Dust Bowl many of the farmers weren’t fully educated in preventing most of the natural disasters that occurred. The drought has 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.”
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.
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.
The opening chapter paints a vivid picture of the situation facing the drought-stricken farmers of Oklahoma. Dust is described a covering everything, smothering the life out of anything that wants to grow. The dust is symbolic of the erosion of the lives of the people. The dust is synonymous with "deadness". The land is ruined ^way of life (farming) gone, people ^uprooted and forced to leave. Secondly, the dust stands for ^profiteering banks in the background that squeeze the life out the land by forcing the people off the land. The soil, the people (farmers) have been drained of life and are exploited:
While with horses, a farmer could only plow three acres of land in a day; with a tractor, he would plow up to 50 acres. As a result of the tractors, farmers plowed up too much and eventually caused the lands to dry up. In the summer of 1931, the rain stopped. Whirlwinds began to dance across the fields, but nobody seemed to notice that everyday they were becoming thicker, larger, and faster. None of these residents imagined these random whirlwinds would become destructive storms. Victims of these gruesome storms stated that the clouds of dust would slowly come closer and end up surrounding them. They brought pure darkness. Residents thought it was the end of the world. Animals were found dead in the fields with stomachs coated with up to two inches of dirt. Dust would enter people’s ears, mouths, noses, and eyes, causing it to be difficult for them to see and breath. An epidemic, known as dust pneumonia, arose in these areas. One third of the population in this area died due to the pneumonia. The Red Cross eschewed dusk masks to help prevent sickness. The weather Bureau reported thirteen dust storms in 1932 and thirty-eight in 1933. However, the worst recorded storm was on April 14, 1935. This day
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, 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” refers to a time during the 1930’s where the Great Plains region was drastically devastated by drought. All of the 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.