Migrant Workers In The 1930s

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.

By 1933, thirteen to fifteen million Americans were unemployed, and nearly half of the banks throughout the country failed. Many Americans were forced to buy with credit causing them to fall into debt. To add to the stock market crashing and unemployment rate soaring, the United States suffered severe drought. The drought impacted agriculture greatly, and was seen to cause the failure of many farms. The United States fell into a food shortage soon after.

Population numbers were at an all-time high, so securing employment was difficult for many. If ones’ parents had money and/or family ties to money, one had several options, such as going into the family business (if one’s father was a blacksmith you could apprentice as a blacksmith beginning at a young age.) On the other hand, if ones’ parents were peasant farmers, they would most likely have little option other than working the farm along with the mass population, which came with poor pay and limited opportunities. However, the Black Death pandemic changed much of this system. With mass death, there were fewer and fewer peasant farmers, which lead to a limited supply of farm workers.

In the country, families suffered because of unusual droughts of the 1930 's that caused crops to fail miserably meant the already indebted farmers commonly lost their properties. At one time in 1932, there were near to 250,000 homeless children throughout America. By far the ones who fared much worse off were African Americans owing to the fact that they were already impoverished anyway. The fact was white Americans were preferable as employees at that day and age, so black Americans were considered the first to be fired in

The cotton factories in specific were known as terrible places. They over worked and underpaid their staff who desperately needed money. Farmers were also heavily hit by this depression. By 1920 almost all farmers went into debt by buying machinery and land. They borrowed money to buy this machinery thinking it would help them produce goods faster and make more money however, that didn’t really happen.

This destruction was the dust bowl of the 1930’s. The dust bowl was a man-made and natural disaster that devastated America and messed with millions of lives. To begin the dust bowl lasted for many years. To follow, Farmers plowed fields when there was no water and dried up the land, the crops took all the water, and the drought killed crops. Furthermore, One-third of people lived on farms, they were being kicked of the land because WW1 made the prices fall, and raised how many crops were made.

Workers for these railroads and factories faced many hardships. “Thomas Hobbes described life in nature as poor, solitary, nasty, brutish, short—and for many workers that was the case” Unfortunately their tough lives were mostly inescapable. The only available jobs at the time was working for companies owned by a lot of the same men with the same intentions. All wages for these jobs were so low, workers couldn’t fare the expense of trying to find better work. The average annual income of these families was around three hundred and eighty dollars, well below the poverty line of this time period.

There were no famers on the ship list ( Smith). Without farmers, the colonist could not grow crops and so they starved. On the list, there were some men without known jobs. A few off the unknown men may have known a little about farming, but most likely not enough. Droughts were also a problem.

The 1930s was a time of advancement in America, but it wasn’t necessarily a good time. One of the events of this time was the Dust Bowl. Throughout the mid-1930s, there was a drought in the Midwest, causing many farmers to lose their jobs, leave the Great Plains, and head west towards California (Gregory). Another devastating part of the 1930s was the Great Depression, which affected the whole nation. Many people were out of jobs, and some people, such as Henry Ford, believed that the best way to take care of this was through “self-help” (Dudley).

The Great Depression all started when the stock market crashed in 1929. People stopped using banks. The dust bowl started. People got employed. People waited in long lines just for bread.