Claire rubin
The Great Depression and Dust Bowl
The 1930s were a time of hardship for the citizens living in The United States. The Dust Bowl and The Great Depression brought on many substantial consequences that affected many family’s lives entirely. The Great Depression was mainly caused by the stock market crash of 1929. Banks lost all of their money, therefore people were not able to retrieve the money that they had deposited in the bank. The Dust Bowl was a decade long dust storm that brought up farmland and carried it with the winds of the storm. Before the Dust Bowl, the farms had stripped the farmland of the moisture by over using the land, and when the drought came the land became especially susceptible to the winds that came shortly thereafter. The Dust Bowl and the Great Depression made thousands of people in the U.S. unemployed, the typical family dynamic changed, and people lost homes. Firstly, poverty brought on by the Great Depression spread throughout the country and made unemployment increase significantly. The output of crops in the Midwest significantly decreased because of the winds and dirt deposits onto the crops of the Dust Bowl. In Text 4, Franklin Delano Roosevelt states, “a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence…. Our greatest primary task is to put people to work.” The quote represents the fact that unemployment in America was in such a bad spot where the government needed to step in and help the majority of the people who were not financially stable. Another cause why American economy crashed is because employers realized that people would do anything for work and work for just about anything, so their immediate response was to lower worker’s wages so the employers made more money. It says in Text 3, “The volume of manufactured goods dropped sharply, as did the national payroll. The response was to lay off workers, slash dividends, reduce inventories, cut remaining wages, forgo improvements and reduce production.” The quote depicts economic struggles workers dealt with throughout the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. Overall, unemployment gripped the workforce of America, making it the worst economic depression America has ever been in.
In addition, the
To keep the Great Plains residents healthy, “The Red Cross opened six emergency hospitals to deal with the crisis” (Brown 37). This shows that the Dust Bowl crisis got so bad that organizations like the Red Cross enlisted to help the Dust Bowl residents get back on their feet and become happy and healthy once again. To help with the situation, “The federal government developed programs to aid Dust Bowl residents” get back on their feet. This reveals that everyone had to join in the help get the Great Plains get back to its former glory and ability to produce crops. This also shows that the federal government was working to help prevent a disaster this big from occurring again. Finally “The long dry spell ended in the autumn of 1939. Rain drenched the plains for the two days and nights” (Heinrichs 39). This is important because nature finally ran its course and nourished the water-deprived soil. This shows that the long-awaited end to the Dust Bowl and drought had finally ended, bringing hope to not only Dust Bowl residents but all of the United States. The Dust Bowl, an event that caused so much destruction to the Great Plains and the American economy, was finally
“We watched as the storm swallowed the light. The sky turned from blue to black, night descended in an instant and the dust was on us…Dust lay two feet deep in ripply waves across the parlor floor, dust blanketed the cookstove, the icebox, the kitchen chairs, everything deep in dust.” -Karen Hesse’s Diary, April, 1935 (Dust Bowl Diary Entries). In the 1930s, a phenomenon called the Dust Bowl swept the people of the Great Plains off their feet. This paper defines the Dust Bowl and its impact on the US economy and American citizens.
The economy was not the only thing drying up during the 1930s as a horrific drought took over the Great Plains at the same time. The drought turned the topsoil to loose dust that was carried away with the wind. The resulting dust storms were so large and destructive they made their way all the way to the East Coast. Many of the people in the Midwest were farmers who were left with no way of providing for themselves and without a place to live. This left many of them homeless and in need of government aid. The Dust Bowl was one of the worst disasters in United States history as it displaced millions of people, caused disease, and
Did you know that chinchillas took dust baths? Well Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Colorado had took their own in the years of 1930’s. The Dust Bowl was a ten year dust storm that was a continuous downpour destroying millions of agriculture and lives of thousands of people. The Dust Bowl later called the “ Dirty Thirties” was caused by a continuous drought that happened a year before the Dust Bowl and the next ten years of it. Over the ten years of the Dust Bowl, the more time that grew the more dust and destruction it caused to everything around it.
The Dust Bowl brought about substantial negative effects on the economy and agriculture of the Great Plains and aggravated what was left of the American economy during the great Depression. The dust storms ruined everything on the Great Plains including crops and entire farms, hence ruining the careers and livelihoods of many farmers (Egan, 2). As a consequence, the American economy collapsed even more during the Great Depression. The help of the government and training on better farming techniques greatly helped the farmers to get back on their feet. A combination of human actions and environmental factors were responsible for causing the dust storms and in turn, the Dust Bowl made numerous people abandon their homes, suffer, and eventually
Farmers were affected by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. “Much of the Roaring '20s was a continual cycle of debt for the American farmer, stemming from falling farm prices and the need to purchase expensive machinery.” (UShistory.org). The farmers were struggling with money and affording the tools needed to grow a crop. The farming way of life was slowly fading away. During the era of the Dust Bowl, there was a major drought, so farmers struggled with maintaining enough water for their crops to grow.
The Dust Bowl was a time during the 1930’s when a drought and over-farmed land caused years of dust storms to ravage the American southwest.Loose topsoil was picked up by strong winds to form black storms of dust and dirt. Farmers had to board up their houses in preparation for when the growing black cloud on the horizon would come crashing down on their houses. Thousands of farmers couldn't pay their loans due to lost crops and banks foreclosed on their farms. This event coincided with the height of the Great Depression, strengthening the effects of both terrible phenomena.
In the 1930’s better known as “the dirty thirties”, the dust bowl effected thousands of framers and their families in the Southwest and the Midwest. The incredible power of dust clouds by wind erosion, over framing and the long drought lead to a turning point in the ways of agriculture and the economy. This is important because this event caused families to migrate to other mostly the west and even led to death and disease.
The Dust Bowl added quickly to the chaos of The Great Depression during the 1930s. The Dust Bowl was a natural disaster and mainly erosion of topsoil which caused dusters and black blizzards. It mainly hit the area of the southwest which included the following states Kansas,Oklahoma, Arkansas, Dakota etc. A quick brief of what The Dust Bowl did … it affected more than a million of acres of land that were used mainly for farming. Also, thousands of farmers lost their livelihoods and properties, and migration began to emerge as farmers left rural areas to find work in the suburbs. Some people who were mainly affected by The Dust Bowl were people in the
The Dust Bowl ruined acres and acres of farming land that took thousands of years to produce. “The Dust Bowl of the 1930s lasted about a decade. In fact the agriculture devastation helped to lengthen the Depression whose effects were felt worldwide. The movement of people on the Plains was also profound.” (About The Dust…). When rainfall accumulation dropped, fields started turning into dust. Families from all over were leaving to find better farming land to make a living.
On the 29th of October the stock market crashed which became to be known as ‘Black Tuesday’. On this day 16 million shares were traded after a wave of panic swept Wall Street. All of the investors that had bought stocks with borrowed money were wiped out completely. After this catastrophic day there was a massive downturn in factories and business. Many employers started firing off their employees, those that were lucky enough to stick with their jobs were getting really low wages. Many americans started buying stuff on credit, they later fell into debt. This Depression caused unemployment to rise to 25% by 1933. The Great Depression was not the only thing
In 1931 a long drought arrived. For five years in a row farmer’s could not grow crops like wheat or corn. Since there was no water to make the soil firm, it would blow away and over time made dust storms that got up to 50 or 60 miles per hour. These dust storms ruined people's lives by killing them, burying their crops, covering the insides of their house in dust, and ruining the economy.
The Great Depression was an economic crash in the United States from 1929-1939. Contributing to the Great Depression was the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was an area of the United States that suffered a severe drought in the 1930s. In the novel, To kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, the main character, Atticus has a job as a lawyer and can afford food and does not suffer as much as many others do from the Great Depression. The town is not suffering from the Dust Bowl as much as other parts of the country are.
The severe economic downfall during the period from 1929 to 1941 is known as The Great Depression. The stock market crashed and millions of people lost their jobs and ended up homeless. It was one of the most terrifying eras in the US’ history. Industry and agriculture were both major causes of the Depression. Many things were replaced due to the fact of development of the technology. For example, railroads lose to automobiles and coal loses to hydro elective , natural gas, and oil. Also, fewer houses are built because almost all of the industries were declining, so businesses also declined since there was no one to built houses. Furthermore, businesses who relied on or were related to those industries were also dragged down, such as wood companies, furniture factories, and real estates. This was the same for railroads and coal as well. Another significant cause was the decline of the agriculture. Farms over-produced during World War I in order to feed Europe, and corn and wheat tool out loans. Farms cut down trees to try to extend their land to produce more crops. However, since there were no more trees, the soil got loose and became easily picked up by the strong winds. This created huge dust storms, which also had nothing to stop it, and became known as The Dust Bowl. After the war, the crops declined 40% and the prices dropped as farms produced more. These unfortunate cycles lead to the depression. The president at the time was Herbert Clark Hoover, who was elected in
With 30 percent of Americans already agitated by the crumbling prices of agricultural goods, the severe drought known as the Dust Bowl, lasting nearly ten years, wiped out farmers crops, and carries with it implications of prolonging the end of the Great Depression. Due to the advantageous agricultural