Dust Bowl 1930

The Dust Bowl was a terrible experience during a horrible time. In the 1930s post World War I America had a total collapse of the stock market causing the Great Depression affecting the economy on a global scale, but hitting hardest at home in the United States. However, the economy wasn’t the only thing that was hit hard during this time; seemingly unstoppable dust storms ravaged farming land from the west to east coast hitting hardest in the great plains in the middle section the the US became known as the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was not entirely a causation of bad luck on nature, it was caused by an increasing demand for crops, advancements in farming technology, while the final nail in the coffin was a lack of rain.

The Dust Bowl was a very desperate and troublesome time for America. The southwestern territories were in turmoil due to the arid effect of the drought causing no fertile soils. As the rest of America was being dragged along with the stock market crash and higher prices of wheat and crops since the producing areas couldn't produce. This was a streak of bad luck for the Americans as they were in a deep despair for a quite some time. Luckily Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to shine some light with a new deal.

“I raise up my voice- not so I can shout but so that those without a voice can be heard…,” once said Malala Yousafzai. Women’s rights in the 1930s were a serious issue. Women had just received the right to vote, yet there was still many discriminatory actions towards women. This dramatic period in time took place during the Great Depression, which caused women’s rights to be overlooked.

During the Great Depression a Midwestern phenomenon called the Dust Bowl affected many lives of newly settled Americans throughout the Great Plains region. Otherwise known as the “Dirty Thirties”, a storm of dry weather caused farmers and villagers to abandon their homes in hope to survive the deadly threat of the storm. The Dust Bowl was a big contributing factor to the Great Depression agriculturally, and economically.

During the Dust Bowl some people made the decision to stay at their farms. Huge drifts of dirt piled up on homesteaders’ doors, came in the cracks of windows and came down from the ceilings. Barnyards and pastures were buried in dirt. After about 850 million tons of topsoil was blown away in 1935 alone. The government responded to this by saying “Unless something is done, the western plains will be as arid as the Arabian desert.”

“ According to the WPA, three-fifths of all first-time rural relief cases in the Great Plains area were directly related to drought, with a disproportionate amount of cases being farmers (68%) and especially tenant farmers (70% of the 68%). However, it is not known how many of the remaining cases (32%) were indirectly affected by drought. The WPA report also noted that 21% of all rural families in the Great Plains area were receiving federal emergency relief by 1936 (Link et al., 1937); the number was as high as 90% in hard-hit counties (Warrick, 1980).

The dust bowl was considered the “Worst hard time” in american history. The Dust Bowl was a big cloud of dust that took place during the 1930’s in the middle of the Great Depression. The dust bowl was located in the southern great plains as it affected states like Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. The three main causes of the Dust Bowl were drought (Doc E), amount of land being harvest (Doc D), and the death shortgrass prairie (Doc C).

Have a minute, great. Because this may be the only chance for you to hear about this great disaster the dust bowl or known as the dirty thirties. In the 1930’s there was an horrible disaster called the dust bowl. The people who lived through the dust bowl, lived through a nightmare, that nightmare didn’t end till ten years later. Ten years, of drought wind dirt that’s a long time for a storm (Campbell __).

he early 20th century was a period of social change and urbanization which followed by the Great Depression. The dust become a way of life. A dust bowl survivor described what daily life was like during the dust bowl: “ In the morning the dust hung like fog, and the sun was as red as ripe new blood. All day the dust sifted down from the sky, and the next day it sifted down. An even blanket covered the earth. It settled on the corn, piled up on the tops of the fence posts, piled up on the wires; it settled on roofs, blanketed the weeds and trees” [2]. Strong wind blowed all the time. The sky was cloudy and dusty. The sun hides between the thick layers of dust. Dust blown everywhere and covered everything including houses. Layer of dust piled

Consequently, the Great Depression made money very limited, so many people got multiple jobs to support their families. As cited in the Digging In, Robert J. Hastings states that his fathers “willingness to take any job” and his mother’s “ability to stretch out every dollar”, is an example of how many lived back then. Whatever money people could make, was required to be used over a period of time, as people had no income they could rely on. Whilst this was a major step in putting people into poverty, it did not completely do so.

Dust Bowl, The Southern Plains in the 30’s written by Donald Worster and published in 1979, is an informative text on the Great Plains during the Great Depression. Donald Worster is a credible author because he not only earned a Ph.D. from Yale in environmental history, but he also had previously written a book on the environment and the economy.

The dust bowl was a frightening time for most people during the 1930s. severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion. The Dust Bowl negatively affected people who lived there in a personal way.

“With the gales came the dust. Sometimes it was so thick that it completely hid the sun. Visibility ranged from nothing to fifty feet, the former when the eyes were filled with dirt which could not be avoided, even with goggles ”( Richardson 59). The Dust Bowl was a huge dust storm in the 1930s that stretched from western Kansas to New Mexico. People that lived in that area could not step outside or they would get dust in their lungs. Livestock could not breath or find food sources. Thousands of people lost their homes due to the storm. Changes in farming and agriculture in the early 1900s altered the landscape and soil creating the perfect environment for the Dust Bowl and impacted living conditions and economic policy.

The Dust bowl effected people in many ways such as becoming unemployed and becoming very poor and hungry. This led to many people abandoning their homes to go find jobs somewhere else. The Dust Bowl destroyed many farmers’ lives during the Great Depression.

The Dust Bowl was an agricultural devastation that deeply affected the nation in the 1930s. In the beginning of 1932, a drought struck the Midwestern and Southern Plains. This caused the soil in over-plowed and over-grazed lands to dry to dust and blow away. During this time, a lot of laws and projects were taken into consideration to provide relief and promote rehabilitation. The Emergency Relief Appropriation Act was approved on April 8th, 1935 for drought relief. It provided $525 million and employed over 8.5 million people in the Works Progress Administration. The Dust Bowl left many farmers and their families broke and having to turn over their fields to the bank. The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act of 1933 gave $200 million to farmers facing