Dust Bowl Research Paper

The Dust Bowl delivered a crazy drought to the fields of the Great Plains and crushed the economy during the Great Depression. Massive dust clouds destroyed just about everything from crops, farms, and the lives and jobs of thousands of farmers. This resulted in even more economic despair during the Great Depression. The Dust Bowl happened in the 1930s in the Great Plains due to farmer’s poor cultivation techniques. Although the farmers cultivation options didn 't work, the federal government really helped them out with after five years went by.

During the 1900s a “Great Depression” hit America and not only America but countries worldwide. The depression took place as late as the roaring twenties. The great depression was an economic decline caused by the stock market that affected America’s government and especially its citizens. At the time, president Herbert Hoover believed that the economy could recover on its own and had no interest in involving the the federal government with the crisis. In sum, many Americans and migrant workers suffered immense poverty.

Our economy during the 1930s was struggling trying to recover from the Great Depression, and this brought out the worst in Americans. The stock crash during the 1930s, left banks uninsured and the government with no compensation for the unemployed. This left hundreds of families begging for food on the streets. During this decade, the Zoot Suit Riots was a primarily example of a hate crime against Mexican American in Los Angeles. This awful event is controversial to this day when discussing who 's to blame for this crime.

October 29, 1929 was perhaps one of the most dreadful days in American history for its economy. Before “Black Tuesday”, as it was known, stock prices had been dropping. As a result, America experienced a devastating reality known as the Stock Market Crash. Many economists hold the belief that it was caused due to people “buying on margin”. The effects of this were detrimental and quickly lead us into a depression, and not only for America, but around the world as well.

Amid the 1930 's, the Great Plains was tormented with a dry spell, a long stretch of dryness, which brought downfall to a number of the farmers in the area. This appalling drought began

(Disease during the Dust Bowl) For the people that did not move out of the area, the dust had a great impact on their health. Many people did not get enough to eat because the crops would not grow so they were malnourished. People got rickets, which is what happens when your diet is so unhealthy and you do not get enough Vitamin D. “People also got Valley Fever, which is fungus in the lungs”.

Jason 5 The Worst Hard Time The Worst Hard Time The Worst Hard Time, written by New York TImes’s Timothy Egan in 2006. The book takes place during a time called “The Dirty Thirties” or “the Great American Dust Bowl” a time which spanned about 10 years with very severe dust storms and drought, which estimated to have caused over $30 billion dollars worth of damage by today’s standards. The dust storms, however, were not the result of mother nature but rather the result of the industrializing world and surplus of crops which flooded the market, soon after farmers were unable to make the profit from selling their crops and slowly lost money until they could not afford to keep their land fertile. Thus causing a barren wasteland where their crops were.

Economic problems were not the only problems farmers faced. They entered a decade of drought, never before experienced in America. What they did not lose in the economic collapse, they lost because of the drought and an environmental disaster, the Dust Bowl, a severe dust storm that damaged farmers’ land and property. Fortunately, when Roosevelt became president, he quickly implemented legislations

Arising from the Great Depression, an even bigger problem came around the corner. The Dust Bowl affected many farmers and settlements across the land of 100 million acres. The Dust Bowl became known as the “dirty thirties” and became known as the only acceptable US drought. The Dust Bowl lasted 10 excruciating

Ever heard of the Dust Bowl? “The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that really damaged the agriculture of the US and during the 1930s. The Dust Bowl was a severe drought that has started to ruin the agriculture. When this happened the states including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico were affected.” ( John Steinbeck ).

On “Black Thursday” October 24th, 1929- the Wall Street Stock Market crashed sending the American economy in a decade long Depression that left millions of men and women starving, unemployed, and willing to do anything for work. “The worldwide, decade-long depression struck the United States like a Biblical Plague, shuttering factories, closing banks, foreclosing on farms and putting as many as one out of three workers on the street.” (WBA, 391). The federal government 's “hands off” approach to the economy in the early stages of the Depression proved to be inadequate and the American people’s need for assistance became too great to ignore. Forced to adapt, American citizens and politicians had to come up with new ways to deal with the lack

Because of the little money the farmers were making many were forced to leave and find work elsewhere. One-fourth of the people who lived in the Dust Bowl left the region. Many of them had skills beyond farming, and when they didn’t find work they suffered extreme poverty.(UXL Encyclopedia of Weather and Natural Disasters. Ed. Amy Hackney Blackwell and Elizabeth Manor.)(p223-225).

When Black Tuesday came around on October 29th, 1929, the banks lost all the money they had invested with other people 's money. Banks had to shut down, making people lose their jobs forcing them to join the rest of the public. “I grew up in an area of pretty severe poverty. My parents weathered the Great Depression, and money was always a big concern. I was weaned on a shortage mentality and placed in foster homes largely because there wasn’t enough money to take care of the most basic of needs.”

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. During World War

“ Determining the direct and indirect costs associated with this period of droughts is a difficult task because of the broad impacts of drought, the event’s close association with the Great Depression, the fast revival of the economy with the start of World War II, and the lack of adequate economic models for evaluating losses at that time. “ http://drought.unl.edu/DroughtBasics/DustBowl/EconomicsoftheDustBowl.aspx “ Then the drought began. It would last eight straight years. Dust storms, at first considered freaks of nature, became commonplace. Static charges in the air shorted-out automobiles on the road; men avoided shaking hands for fear of shocks that could knock a person to the ground.