Eight Days In The Dust Bowl

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. This book was written well and Worster did a good job of revealing how people and how they live have effected the areas environment. He spoke of places including, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas and many more.

Eight, six, four, two--the Dust Bowl makes them go achoo. The articles “Letters for the Dust Bowl” by Caroline A. Henderson and "The Untold Stories of Those Who Survived The Great American Dust Bowl” By Timothy Egan describe the living conditions the civilians had to live through. Numerous people were affected by the living conditions of the Dust Bowl(Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture). First and foremost, the Dust Bowl affected the lives of the people who had to live through it because they were trying to keep the dust out of their houses so they would not get sick. Henderson stated, “Wearing our shade hats, with handkerchiefs tied over our faces and vaseline in our nostrils…”

Timothy Egan wrote this book to describe a hard time during the Dust Bowl. He described how the Dust Bowl affected the farmers and effected on the life at all. The Dust Bowl occurred during the time of economic depression. He focused on untold stories about people live in the Dust Bowl.

“ 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.

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.”

Dust Bowl and Economics of the 1930s 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.

The livestock was another group that was affected in the dust bowl. When the AAA demanded the farmers to plow over there land they killed 6 million young pigs were slaughtered. Many of those pigs just starved because the farmers were no longer working so they could not feed them. When the dust bowl came money farmers and ranchers livestock were killed and when they cut them open there was only dust in there lungs and guts. The cattle grazing was reduced and millions of more acres were plowed and planted.

In fact, there were nine years of below-average rainfall resulting in droughts. As a consequence of the drought, it caused the land to be arid and created a water shortage that led to crops dying. This is an impeccable condition for Dust Bowl as the wind blew across the plains to pick up the dirt forming massive swirling dust storms. To sum up, the dust bowl was provoked by both humans and nature combined, poor farming techniques and droughts. If people had not over-plowed and over-grazed the prairie plains, maybe the dust bowl might not have taken place.

It has been 76 years since the dust bowl had ended. The dust bowl swept across Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas throughout 1930-1940. Before the dust bowl many people traveled to these states for good land. The dust bowl was caused by a drought and strong winds. The dust from the drought was being blown around by the strong winds and covering everything.

The disaster known as the Dust Bowl was a major setback for American and Americans in the Midwest. The Dust Bowl was a time in history where drought was at its peak. The drought was throughout the states; Colorado, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. The Dust Bowl lasted for six years, 1930 to 1936. The 1930s was not only known for the Dust Bowl, but for other reasons also like, The Great Depression and WW1.

Leah Martin Mrs.McKenna English /5th period 13 May 2016 Final Copy Our family can only eat whatever we grow on a small plot of land located a short way from our house. We have no other form of income so if we are unable to pick anything to eat from the land we go without food on that day. This happens a lot and we regularly go several days without any food at all. When we do pick vegetables from the land it’s very rarely enough for the whole family to be fed so my husband

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).

“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.

As long as they can earn money, the farmers will continue in these practices. Worster spends several chapters focusing on the different solutions to the Dust Bowl and how those solutions were utilized only when the farmers were being paid through President Roosevelt’s New Deal. However, once the quality of the land started to improve or it rained the farmers abandoned the practices in favor of more profit. He focuses on the solutions proposed by the conservationists, ecologists, and agronomists.

Thesis:People's actions caused the dust bowl” The dust bowl Hook: It was a long decade. Full of loneliness,dullness and most of all sickness. "Dust Bowl“A severe drought happened and it had caused dry land farming and the plants could not grow.