Dust Bowl Research Paper

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.

Hoover-Chief Administrator Herbert Hoover became president in 1929, shortly followed by The Great Depression. In the beginning Herbert Hoover did not realize the severity of the economical downfall. While this was not completely Hoovers fault, he took much of the blame for it. As years went on, he created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932.

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.

Before the early twentieth century, Americans either swayed republican or democratic, but as the country reached the 1900s liberal and conservative ideals surfaced into many citizens’ mindsets. Liberals were people with modern ideas and believed that in order to better the American society, there needed to be room for change. Conservatives, however, believed in tradition and had strong beliefs on sticking to the original way of life in America. President Herbert Hoover, who was seen as a conservative, was elected in 1929. Under the republican party, many Americans liked him because he worked his way to the top.

The Dust Bowl made many people migrate to places like California, where the air was fresher and the food was more plentiful. They all believed that maybe one day it would be over, and that kept them going even when they maybe shouldn’t have. Kids and adults developed Dust Pneumonia, some suffocated, and others even committed suicide. Crops were almost gone, and wheat was the only reliable source of food. Families hung wet sheets from their windows in hopes of catching the dirt before it came into their houses, and people swept and wiped dust off from almost

It left thousands, homeless. hungry, and sick. John Steinbeck described some of the effects of the dust bowl in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand.

Herbert Hoover was the president when the Great Depression began. President Hoover believed in a limited role of government and that the people should be independent. He also believed that any help should be voluntarily; most of his so-called “solutions” involved him asking others to do things to help the people suffering. For example, he asked big companies to keep wages steady, and state governments to undertake public work programs. Many people blame him for not stepping in more and trying to lessen the effects of the depression.

Luckily Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to shine some light with a new deal. The Dust Bowl was what they called the Great Depression in the drought stricken areas. The condition of the areas around Oklahoma and Texas made living dangerous and futile. “When drought struck

The Dust Bowl of the 1930 's caused devastation for the mid-west at the time. It went on in Oklahoma,Texas,New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas; however, slimmer areas were actually affected by the Dust Bowl like the Oklahoma panhandle, the Texas panhandle, the Northeast of New Mexico, the Southeast of Colorado, and the western third of Kansas. The drought that caused the Dust Bowl affected about 27 states and covered about 75% of the country. It was in April of 1934 that Black Sunday, the worst storm of the Dust Bowl, occurred. Shortly after President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed the Conservation Act.

This negatively affected the people who were migrating and were in direct competition for jobs with longer- established residents and would keep creating conflict with those people. “Many people were not able to make a living in drought-stricken regions and were forced to migrate to other areas in search of a new livelihood. ("Drought in the Dust Bowl") Many people had no choice to leave which affected them in a personal way because they had to forced to leave in search of a new livelihood because they will mostly not survive through the Dust Bowl. ”In addition, because of poverty and high unemployment, migrants added to local relief efforts, sometimes overburdening relief and health agencies. ”

“The trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange just after the crash of 1929”. In a single day, sixteen million shares were traded--a record--and thirty billion dollars vanished into thin air. (Cary Nelson). This ultimately led to the

The Dust Bowl Dust clouds, filthy homes, sickness, death, and migration were none other than the Dust Bowl. In the 1930s some of the toughest people survived this era. It wasn’t just the worldwide depression that made a lasting impact on the United States, the Dust Bowl changed the nation’s perspective on conserving soil and protecting the Earth.

There began to be a gradual decline in prices and the stock market ruptured. On October 24, 1929, the infamous “Black Thursday” took place, where stock holders went on a panic selling spree. Things then went from bad to worse, stock prices went down 33 percent. People stopped purchasing goods and business investments decreased after the crash. In the fall of 1930, the first of four major waves

The Dust Bowl had a negative impact on rural families because most of them could not escape the effects of dust storms. According to Trimarchi, many farmers faced foreclosure on their land because they were not earning enough money on crops to pay back their debts (Trimarchi, 2018). The Dust Bowl also caused soil erosion across the plains which led to crop failure. Farmers were not able to make any profit with their failing crops, this contributed to many farmers losing their land due to foreclosure.

The dust storms of the 1930s forced farmers and the federal government to utilize all of the technical expertise and financial resources they could command to bring the wind erosion problem under control. When drought and dust storms returned to the region during the 1950s, the technology and conservation practices that Dust Bowl farmers had been using for twenty years prevented the region from reverting to the severe conditions of the