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Effects of the dust bowl
The impact the great depression had on the united states
Effects of the dust bowl
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The Dust Bowl
Introduction
The Dust Bowl also known as the “Dirty Thirties” was the one of the worst disasters in the environment. It was a century long from 1931 to 1939. It lead the depression into bad circumstances than what it already was in.
Depression
Depression was one of the deepest and longest economic slump in the history of the West. It began after the stock market crash in 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and destroyed out millions of investors. The next few years the investment dropped, causing and rising levels of unemployment as companies laid off workers. By 1933 the Depression reached its rock bottom. At least 14 million Americans were not working and nearly half the banks in the country went out of business.
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The Dust Bowl The Dust Bowl began in 1931.
The skies would began to darken and then later on became pitch black. Even the most closed homes would have a big layer of dust on the furniture. The population started to go down, over 75% of the country was changed and half covered. It happened in 1935 causing extensive damage. It lasted for about a good nine years. Enormous clouds of dust and dry soil went across the nation.
What Brought an end to the Drought
It ended a little while after World War II ended. The drought damaged the whole entire plains and covered more than 60% of the US during its peak July, 1934. It brought destructive contact to many and caused the journey of millions of people from the Plains to other parts of the country, a lot to the Western United States. It would at least take 11 trillion gallons of rain to end the drought. In 1933 it all changed the rainfall started coming down and ended the whole Drought.
Post Dust Bowl Era
It was the name given to the Great Plains region devastated by the drought in the 1930’s Depression ridden in America. People killed over 6 million pigs to get fair prices. The FSRC agricultural commodities to please the organization. They used apples, beans, canned beef, flour, and pork products. Just so they could get money to raise money and get back on their
feet. Black Blizzard April 14, 1935 a severe drought hit the Midwestern and Southern plains. It was the worst weather day out of all the dust storms that year. Crops died and the dust began to overflow and over graze land as it blows. A huge cloud of black top soil swooped down and covered from Texas all the way to Canada. It marked the turning point in the Federal Governments awareness of the soil erosion. Conclusion The Dust Bowl was one of the worst environmental disasters and it caused many damages to homes, buildings, farms, etc. They slaughtered pigs for food and made homes out of materials they found. The people were in great depression at the time and didn’t have the money to pay for damages.
In the 1929, the Great Depression was a worldwide depression that lasted for 10 years. The stock market crash of the 1929 caused the Depression, when loans were given out and people couldn’t repay the loan. It affected many American lives, the unemployment skyrocketed from 3% to 25%. Work wages fell 42% for those who still had a job. The Great Depression lasted so long because it affected a nation and people didn’t have money to spend to recover the economy.
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.
1.The great depression was a time between late 1929 to 1939 and was completely ended during World War Two. It started with a series of events, most famously the Wall Street stock market crash, that induce poverty on the American citizens. It caused the downfall of the US economy.
A depression is defined as a long period of severe economic and social hardship, massive unemployment, and suffering. This particular depression around the 1930s was a GREAT depression. There was drought on the prairies which lessened already cheap harvests, only 300000 of 11000000 Canadians actually earned enough money to pay income tax, and over 25% of Canada's workforce was unemployed. A small minority actually made a lot of money during the depression, but the majority were suffering harshly.i A depression this caliber had never even been heard of before.
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
The 1930s 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 crashed and a severe drought turned into a disastrous storm. The 1930s affected 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.
The Great Depression was a period in United States history when business was poor and many people were out of work. The beginning of the Great Depression in the United States was associated with the stock market crash on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday. Thousands of investors lost large amounts of money and many were wiped out, lost everything. Banks, stores, and factories were closed and left millions of Americans jobless and homeless (Baughman 82).
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 there was very little preparation and planning the farmers could do before having to abandon their homes.
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.
The Great Depression was a period of first-time decline in economic movement. It occurred between the years 1929 and 1939. It was the worst and longest economic breakdown in history. The Wall Street stock market crash started the Great Depression; it had terrible effects on the country (United States of America). When the stock market started failing many factories closed production of all types of good. Businesses and banks started closing down and farmers fell into bankruptcy. Many people lost everything, their jobs, their savings, and homes. More than thirteen million people were unemployed.
Black Sunday refers to a particularly severe dust storm that occurred on April 14, 1935, as part of the Dust Bowl. It was one of the worst dust storms in American history and it caused immense economic and agricultural damage. It is estimated to have displaced 300 million tons of topsoil from the prairie area in the US.
The Great Depression was the deepest and longest-lasting economic downfall in the history of the United States. No event has yet to rival The Great Depression to the present day, although we have had recessions in the past, and some economic panics, fears. Thankfully, the United States of America has had its share of experiences from the foundation of this country and throughout its growth, many economic crises have occurred. In the United States, the Great Depression began soon after the stock market crash of October 1929, which sent Wall Street into a panic and wiped out millions of investors ("The Great Depression."). In turn, from this single tragic event, numerous amounts of chain reactions occurred.