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The dust bowl and its effects on the great depression
Conclusion of the dust bowl
Conclusion of the dust bowl
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The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl, have you heard of it? The Dust Bowl time period was also known as The Dirty Thirties. What was the Dust Bowl, and where did it come from, how long did it last, what type of things happened to life, what is the Soil Conversation Group, and why is it important to conserve soil?
The Dust Bowl was a huge cloud that swept over states in the 1930’s. The clouds were full of dirt/dust and debris. The Dust Bowl was one of the worst things to happen in American History. It was this huge drought that never had any rain for years! The worst part was that so many people died from it. The drought was so big-in fact-that the drought went from northern Texas all the way to Saskatchewan, Canada. The drought hit the states,
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Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas. Those are not the only states that got affected though. The states: Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota had a severe drought; not as bad as The Dust Bowl though. The Dust Bowl started in 1931 and ended in 1940.
The Dust Bowl lasted 8-10 years. The cause of The Dust Bowl was mostly a man-made mistake. The goverment did not help with the cause either. Since wheat was a cash crop, the goverment wanted people to grow and grow. So, since the people grew the crops, they sowed the land. Which sowing the land will make the soil into dust. Since there was a drought in the 1930s, with the help of sowing/plowing and planting, it ruined the ground. Then, again, they kept on plowing, which kicked up dust. There was an inch of topsoil. There was a huge gust of wind that came. Since nothing could hold the topsoil down, it started blowing around. The wind kept on coming, and made a huge cloud of dust. Which they named, Dust Bowl.
During the Dust Bowl, dust would get everywhere. You could not hide from it. Dust got in between the cracks in the walls of the houses. People then would have to turn over their plates so they did not get dust on their food. “Daddy says, ‘The potatoes are peppered plenty tonight, Polly, and they chocolate milk for dinner, aren’t we in clover!’ When really all our peppe and chocolate, is nothing but dust.” (Heese 21). It was not just people either. It was animals who also died in The Dust Bowl. They would breathe in the dust and it would clog up their lungs and they would
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die. The Soil Conservation Service was a campaign created by a federal agency.
The campaign provided farmers with financial incentives, so they can take lands unsuited for agriculture. Then, the farmers are allowed to turn them into permanent pastures or forests. New practices were implented like terraces and drainage outlets, to other farming methods like crop rotation and countor plowing. The main mission for the Soil Conservation Service was expanded to include things like water and air quality, energy, and wildlife habitat. The Civilian Conservation Corps was a mission. The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) was the conservation of our natural resources and the salvage of our young men (“Dust
Bowl”) Soil, it’s been in our yards for thousands of years. Soil takes years to make. In 500-1,000 years you will be able to have an inch of soil. This sounds outragous, but it isn’t. Soil is made from weathered rocks. These rocks have been broken down into smaller pieces. They finally breakdown enough to consider it as sediments. Breaking down the rocks mean that it is a physical weathering. Then, chemical weathering happens. With chemical weathering it breaks the little sediments down into sand, clay, and silt. Those three particles, clay, silt, and sand make up our soil. Out soil should be conserved because it is important. Soil is important because it gives homes to many animals.
Many believe the Dust Bowl was caused solely by bad weather, but Egan shows a multitude of factors that led to the catastrophe. In Timothy Egan’s book, The Worst Hard Time, Egan believes that the syndicate and government, overproduction of the land, and drought were all factors that caused the Dust Bowl.
The Jazz Age which is also referred to as the Roaring Twenties began after World War I took place and lasted until 1929, when the Great Depression began. The 1920s opened up a world of change to Americans; some did not approve and others, especially those in the big cities, celebrated with music and dance every day. There were numerous inventions that were being created throughout the 1920s and because of nationwide advertisement; people all over America were able to buy all the same stuff as one another. But unfortunately, times were different for those that lived in Colorado.
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
There are now many conservation programs and measures. “A lot of people in agriculture here recognize that the programs implemented as a result of the Dust Bowl are having a really important effect on holding the soil in place,” ("When the Dust Settled") People in agriculture have listened to programs implemented since the Dust Bowl. They have changed
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.
Natural conditions contributed to the cause of the Dust Bowl. During the year of 1936, North America was dealt an extreme am...
Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas were all victims. They suffered for hours on end of dust blowing through the air into their eyes, mouths and noses. Life could not survive the dustbowl either. Trees were once planted in hopes of collecting the dust, but instead the trees sucked all the water out of the ground. Making the dust even worse. Many tried to leave and find land elsewhere but nobody wanted them there because of low amounts of money.
Hard Times’ ‘The Dirty 30s’ ‘The Great Depression’ (Ganzel n. pag.)This quote describes so much about 1930’s especially farming. Farming was hard because there was a really bad drought. Was out they rain no crops could grow. And the crops can't hold the soil together and not blow away. Which was really bad for the soil to blow away. Also the farmers didn't know that the equipment they were using would tear up the soil too much and it would blow away. The farming in the 1930s was bad because of the dust bowl and the price of everything was low.
The Midwest had been experiencing a severe drought when the wind started to collect any loose dry dirt, building up gigantic dust clouds. The 1920s were so prosperous with many new inventions and lifestyles being adapted. Farmers now had the aid of a tractor to help plow the fields faster and farther.2 Was the newly plowed dirt the cause of the Dust Bowl, historian, Professor R. Douglas Hurt seems to think so. Professor R. Douglas Hurt is the Director of the Graduate Program in Agricultural History and Rural Studies at Iowa State University in Ames. Professor Hurt wrote the book, The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History, based on historical events and his opinion of the what caused the Dust Bowl.3 Professor Hurt said, "Dust storms in the Southern Great Plains, and indeed, in the Plains as a whole, were not unique to the 1930's..
The 1920s was a time of conservatism and it was a time of great social change. From the world of fashion to the world of politics, forces clashed to produce the most explosive decade of the century. It was the age of prohibition, it was the age of prosperity, and it was the age of downfall.
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 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 1920's was a time of change in the United States. “The Roaring Twenties” had an outstanding impact on the economy, social standards and everyday life. It was a time for positive results in the industry of consumer goods and American families, because of higher wages, shorter working hours, and manufacturing was up 60% in consumer goods. But it was also a time of adversity and opposition for others, such as immigrants and farmers. Immigrants had lots of competition when they were looking for work and they weren't treated fairly by Americans, depending on where they came from and what they believed. Farmers were paid very little because the price of food kept going down, they also had the Dust Bowl to worry about. African Americans became further infused with mainstream America during the Harlem Renaissance. They were also able to organize and elect officials who would make life better for them. The Roaring Twenties was a very exciting time to live in and we can all learn what the real world is like, and how we can prepare to be ready for it, today and in the future.
The Dust Bowl, commonly known as the Dirty Thirties, lasted for about a decade and was a period in time where dirt clouds billowed over the Great Plains, these dust storms severely impacted over 75% of the country (Riney-Kehrberg 32). The Dust Bowl affected a section of the Great Plains that extended to Colorado, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma and Northeastern New Mexico. In the 1930s, the United States suffered severe dust storms as high winds and suffocating dust swept the region. The Dust Bowl was both a man created and natural disaster that received its name from the "bowl-shaped" area that was affected. Man-made choices and decisions interfered with what could have been a well cultivated plantation. The act was the inevitable result of intentionally
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.