Summary Of Donald Worster's Dust Bowl

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.

Ever-smelled destruction, and seen destruction? Well some people have. They saw families, die and move away. Better, close and cover the windows and doors here comes the dust. 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.

Chapter 1 establishes the epic context and tone for the entire novel. This brief, but important, opening chapter provides a backdrop for the main events of the narrative, describing the event primarily responsible for spurring the great migration to California during the 1930s. The destructive force of the Dust Bowl is staggeringly described as a backward life cycle, a regression from fertile green to a dead and dusty brown. The deterioration of the land that forces the farmers to huddle and "figger" foreshadows the plight of the Joads: Forced off their land by a bank looking for profit, they will move west seeking a new livelihood. The beautifully apocalyptic description of the slow spread of decay throughout the Oklahoma country is strongly

Donald Worster is an environmental historian and his book Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s helped to define the environmental history movement as it was the first environmental history book published. He breaks the stereotype of how the Dust Bowl was viewed by writing it from an environmental standpoint instead of writing a social history by focusing solely on the people and their experiences. How it helped to define the environmental history movement is that it opened up this avenue for others to write about environmental issues. He is also an anti-capitalist and this book combines his interest in the environment with the effect that capitalism has on the environment.

The 1930s was a defining decade in America's history it was a test of the nation's strength and resulted in many changes, both good and bad. One of the many challenges America faced was the disastrous dust storms in the southern Great Plains. In the years before the dust storms began, farmers cleared the land of the grass in order to plant wheat when the drought came the wheat failed, resulting the Dust Bowl ("Dust Bowl 1931-1939" 3). These storms caused the greatest migration in U.S. history, with about 2.5 million farmers and their families leaving the plains ("Dust Bowl 1931-1939" 3). The Dust Bowl was an enormous struggle that resulted in many economic and agricultural problems that were going to be extremely strenuous to fix. Because

The dust bowl was caused by severe drought,bad farming and change of weather.During the 1930’s,severe drought,failure to know how to farm and to prevent wind erosions,the aeolian processes.The impact this disaster had on the society was scared,because people didn’t know if they were going to make it.Another impact this horrific disaster had on the society was all of their crops were destroyed. the society was scared that the dust would never stop.

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).

In The Worst Hard Time, the author explains how new technology led to overproduction of many crops. A tractor was able to do the work of ten horses and a combine was able to thresh grain in one swoop. A farmer’s harvest could even go up by the thousands. As the farmers made more money they bought nearby land and ripped the grass out to make more space for more crops (Doc. C). With the overproduction of land came bare fields. Without grass to hold the soil down, wind could easily pick up the soil and create a dust storm. In the chart by the Great Plains Drought Area Committee Report of August 27, 1963, it shows the average amount of crops harvested in eight Great Plains states. In 1888 only 50 million acres were harvested. Then in 1929, before the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, 150 acres were harvested (Doc. D). Since there was so much more wheat being produced at this time more land was being used and more grass was being taken away and more storms could occur.

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.

The leading historian of the Dust Bowl, Donald Worster, described it in the following way: “In no other instance was there greater or more sustained damage to the American land, and there have been few times when so much tragedy was visited on its inhabitants. Not even the Depression was more devastating, economically” [2].

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.

The photographs I viewed captured the emotions of the farmers and their children. Viewing the photos, I noticed how the plains were barren and how nothing was in sight except for the dust. I believe the photographs gave me the best understanding because they captured the emotions of the farmer and in turn, I was able to understand why the farmers felt those emotions. Although the interviews were helpful, the stories were told later in the farmer’s life and he might not remember every detail and the description may not be accurate. Articles during the dustbowl also improved my understanding of the dustbowl. Through various articles from the 1930s, I learned how much money was lost during the dustbowl, how the economy and farmers were affected, and the steps to preventing future

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.”

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.

In the 1930s there was an extremely long period of drought that happened in the Southern Plains of the United States. Not only did the area suffer severe dust storms that made crops fail throughout the entire region, but it caused the lives of many livestock and people to be taken away. This decade of dryness was known as the Dust Bowl. Although the Dust Bowl only lasted about 10 years, the economic impacts it had lasted for much longer. Some scientists believe it was the worst drought in North America in 300 years. Caused by a variety of factors, the Dust Bowl economically and socially impacted the lives of thousands.