While the great depression and the Dust Bowl contributes to the downfall of the “Okies” the problems for the farmers started many years before that. During World War I food supplies were in demand due to the closed European markets, farmers were compelled to invest heavily to invest in land and machinery to meet the demand of the market. Once the war was done the prices of their crops dropped significantly which left the farmers unable to repay the hefty loans they took out from the banks. Therefore while the economy was booming before the great depression at the end of the 1920’s, farmers were experiencing very harsh times and had their assets and land seized by banks and private sectors. Like the Joads, they were evicted from their land and
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 Stage: What were some natural or environmental factors that led to the Dust Bowl? Average of 20 inches of rain or less per year. Kansas is a very windy state. There was no natural land forms to stop the wind. Buffalo grass held the dirt together.
Farmers were not the only ones that didn’t work at this time, many people were jobless and they did not know what to do . “The Dust Bowl intensified the crushing economic impacts of the Great Depression and drove many farming families on a desperate migration in search of work and better living conditions.” (in text citation goes here(history.com)) Also, “Families migrated to California or cities to find work that often didn’t exist by the time they got there. Many people ended up living as
The Dust Bowl negatively affected people in an economic way. How Drought played a big role in The Dust Bowl “ Federal aid to the drought-affected states was first given in 1932, but the first funds marked specifically for drought relief were not released until the fall of 1933. In all, assistance may have reached $1 billion (in 1930s dollars) by the end of the drought (Warrick et al., 1980). “ ( Source - http://drought.unl.edu/DroughtBasics/DustBowl/EconomicsoftheDustBowl.aspx )
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.
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 1930’s America suffered extreme temperatures. A drought forming across all farm lands due to failure of successful crop rotation cause dust to form.
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.
Farmers were forced to sell livestock or machinery and borrow money from banks to try to keep their farm running. In 1932, one thousand families a week were losing their farms. If farmers couldn’t pay the bank, a tractor would be sent to destroy their farmhouse and they would say the land was “tractored out.” By 1937, the unemployment rate in Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas was 30%. As Jerry Stanley said in his book Children of the Dust Bowl, “The Okies were broke, they were without land, and they were hungry,” (Stanley 3-10).
Because of economic changes, farmers wanted the US government to to fix their problems through currency changes. After slavery was abolished with the Emancipation Proclamation and the government focused on rebuilding America’s infrastructure, prices for many crops began to drop. Across the nation, farmers began to lose money. In addition, this drop in prices only applied to crops, and not to the other services like shipping and transportation, which remained high. Farmers continued to lose profits until 1892, when a depression sent many farmers into deep debt.
The two things that contributed to the start of the dust bowl are, over-farming and drought. The dust bowl was a terrible dust storm that devastated lives of thousands in the Southern Great Plains. The dust bowl occurred in the 1930’s. People called this time the blackest year.
The Dust Bowl 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 __).
The Historical Significance of the Dust Bowl In one of the most fertile places in the United States, one of the nation's worst disasters occurred, the Dust Bowl. It began when an area in the Midwest was severely affected by an intense drought throughout the 1930s or what proceeded to be called the Dirty Thirties. The drought killed crops that had kept the rich soil in place, and when the strong root system was not there the soil was not kept grounded. Due to the soil left with no crops, the high and strong winds blew the topsoil away.
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.
“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.