“For eight years dust blew on the southern plains. It came in a yellowish-brown haze from the South and in rolling walls of black from the North. The simplest acts of life — breathing, eating a meal, taking a walk — were no longer simple. Children wore dust masks to and from school, women hung wet sheets over windows in a futile attempt to stop the dirt, farmers watched helplessly as their crops blew away.”
-- University of Illinois, English Department - Modern American Poetry: About the Dust Bowl
In the 1930s, the Great Plains region was known as the Dust Bowl. The area encompassed Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico, a region of over 150,000 square miles. The dangerous combination of light rainfall, bad soil, and high winds was a recipe for disaster. Beginning in 1931, drought struck the area and destroyed the grass root system that used to hold down the soil. The high winds could now easily pick up the topsoil, causing “black blizzards,” which occurred when the soil swirled into dust clouds. As a result, people’s animals and lands were choked with thick dust. This drove over 60 percent of the people in the region away (2.5 million), into agricultural areas primarily in the west, like California. By 1934, the storms had spread from the Dust Bowl region to other states. The drought at the time was the worst ever in U.S. history, and it affected 75 percent of the country to some extent.
Aside from the dangerous weather patterns, the Dust Bowl was also caused by farmers working their land too hard and wearing out the thin soil. There was a shift from the earlier usage of land for animals to using land for agriculture. Mechanization allowed farmers to make use of millions of acres at a time, and high grain prices provided extra motivation to plant wheat, which destroyed the original grass cover. Around 35 million acres of land were destroyed for crop production and 225 million more had lost all or most of the topsoil.
In 1935, the government under FDR formed a Drought Relief Service, which bought cattle from counties that were severely affected by the drought and sold it nationwide. They created the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, which provided $525 million for drought relief, as well as the Soil Conservation Act (1935) and the Domestic Allotment Act (1936). These acts attempted to rehabilitate the farms by telling farmers to plant trees and grass, which would anchor the soil and help it return to its previous state. They also advised that farmers create contours in their fields where rainwater could collect and hydrate the soil, as well as letting soil lie fallow without any crops in it so it could recover. In order to stop production from spreading to more land, the government bought 11.3 million acres.
In 1939, the drought finally ended, and although the land was mostly recovered by 1941, the same problems occurred again in WWII and during the 1950s. The Dust Bowl was well-documented by artists like Dorothea Lange, John Steinbeck, and Woody Guthrie, who emphasized the American drive for production that had caused the disaster in the first place. It is remembered as a tragic time for all Americans involved, and hopefully many people will take a lesson from this experience about coexisting with nature.
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To me it's really interesting to see the parralels between the dust bowl and the california drought today. It's hard to imagine how farmers could live if one couldn't have a harvest for years because of the dust and drought.The quote really helped visualize the dust storms.
ReplyDeleteDuring the Dust Bowl, one of the main problems was the immigration to the West. Thousands of people filled up the already depressed Western job market and caused the unemployment there to be even more terrible. This was another part of the great depression that made it "great". I wonder how this immigration was viewed upon by the overly anti-foreign population of America during this time?
ReplyDeleteI was really shocked when I read that 2.5 million people had to leave the mid-west because of the dust bowl affecting them and the region. How did the drought affect the lives of those suffering from the Great Depression?
ReplyDeleteIt was really surprising to learn that the drought affected 75% of the country, and how the Drought Relief Service though the best way to help was to sell cows- that was very interesting. I think it will also be interesting to learn about how it affects people again in WWII.
ReplyDeleteTurns out that although phenomena like global warming and climate change are relatively modern, people still found a way to ruin the environment without the help of industry.
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