The Dust Bowl was a giant drought that took place in the Great Plains and lasted about a decade throughout the 1930s. It was one of the worst droughts in the 20th century , millions of people moved away from their homes to the more fertile lands of the west. Many farmers were unable to grow wheat and other crops, the giant dust storms swarming farms and towns didn’t help either. Even a home closed tight had some dust flowing in from the outside making is impossible to keep it clean. Some people even died of dust pneumonia, where dust would accumulate inside the lungs if exposed to the dust storm for too long, and some storms lasted days. Red Cross volunteers had to wear masks to protect them from the storms. People had to live on bread, beans and milk to survive. Dust would engulf farming equipment and wind erosion made the land useless for farming. Sometimes it would be impossible to see in all the dust being thrown by the wind.The dust would contribute to the drought by decreasing the chances of precipitation. Much of the land was devastated by the overuse of lands by farming wheat and grazing animals. This was apparent to the government which sought to change the farming techniques of the farmers by 1935 but to no avail, the dust bowl continued. Some say that the dust bowl helped elongate the great depression further and the great depression made the situation on the plains worst for the people living in the great plains.
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I think it's interesting how we think that the dust bowl was spread across the whole country, when it only really hit about five states: Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. (http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/images/dustbowlmap.gif). I think the fact that we remember it as so bad shows just how bad it was. For example, we have a drought here in California, but not many people know about it outside of California. The fact that everyone knew about this drought and how widespread the effects were demonstrate how bad it was.
ReplyDeleteSuper interesting topic! I was also interested in how people recovered from the drought. Turns out the government played a major role in helping people recover. The government paid to have meat packed and distributed to the poor and hungry. Apples, beans, canned beef, flour and pork products were distributed through local relief channels. Cotton goods were later included, to clothe the needy.President Franklin D. Roosevelt also administered many programs to conserve soil and restore the ecological balance of the nation. Roosevelt also ordered the Civilian Conservation Corps to plant a huge belt of more than 200 million trees to break the wind, hold water in the soil, and hold the soil itself in place, preventing it from being blown away in the dust storms. The administration also began to educate farmers on soil conservation and anti-erosion techniques, including crop rotation, strip farming, contour plowing, terracing, and other improved farming practices.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl#cite_note-28
Great Post! I just wanted to add that because of the Dust Bowl and very little water around the major agricultural areas, it led to a mass movement towards the cities. Since the crops couldn't grow without water, many packed up and moved towards the cities. But, since unemployment was already so high they ended up just like everyone else. Out on the streets.
ReplyDeleteI researched the Dust Bowl a little more, and it turns out John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, which was written in 1937, and The Grapes of Wrath, written in 1939, were about migrant workers and farm families displaced by the Dust Bowl. Everyone has already read Of Mice and Men and many of us will probably read The Grapes of Wrath at some point later on. The Grapes of Wrath is basically about a poor family of tenant farmers that is forced to leave their Oklahoma home because of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl and travel to California. Not only did the Dust Bowl have an effect on the economy and society, it also influenced the literature of the time very much. These two books are very well-read American classics, so they are just another example of how widespread the effects of this drought really were.
ReplyDeleteThis is very interesting and I couldn't help but think of the movie Interstellar when I saw this article on the Dust Bowl. Interstellar takes place in Earth's future where a global crop blight and a second Dust Bowl is slowly making the planet uninhabitable. I know this has nothing to do with history but it was a great movie and I couldn't help but bring it up.
ReplyDeleteI was under the impression that there were many surpluses during the time, that people were actually burning their own crops to keep prices low. Can anyone please clarify?
ReplyDeleteWell I believe that the surpluses were not actually any substantial increase in crops, but instead, not as many people were willing to buy the crops the farmers had because nobody had money. Also, the Dust Bowl was very contained in the middle of the country, but the other states were very capable of being agriculturally stable. Therefore, even if these two events occurred at the same time, the Dust Bowl wouldn't have affected people on the East or West coast.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.westga.edu/~hgoodson/The%20Great%20Depression.htm
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