The Role Of Rain In The Prairies During The Great Depression

According to the Great Plain Drought Area Committee Report (Doc. D), in 1879, 10 million acres of crop were harvested. 20 years later, in 1899, 50 million acres of crops were harvested, 5 times more crops than in 1879. In 1929, that number more than doubled to a 105 million acres of crops that were harvested. How did happen? Farming technology advanced rapidly from 1879 to 1929. In “The Worst Hard Time” by Timothy Egan (Doc. C), Egan wrote, “A tractor did the work of ten horses. With his new combine, Folkers could cut and thresh the grain in one swoop, using just a fraction of the labor.” The new farming technology made farming faster and it required less labor. Farmers had this new technology and used it to plow more land. Millions of acres were being plowed and farmed on and with the dry soil and no grass to keep it on the ground the dust became airborne and started grouping together and creating terrible storms.

The lack of rainfall led to a drought in 1923 til 1940. Farmers needed at least 20 inches of annual rainfall in order to grow crops in dry regions like the Southern Great Plains (Document E). “ John Wesley Powell, the great Western explorer, determined that 20 inches of

America’s agricultural economy had already been suffering for a decade when nature conspired against the country to exacerbate the Great Depression. From 1931 through 1939,

In the 1930’s the cities Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and fell into a severe drought. They drought had lasted almost a decade, and on top of that the states had big dust storms. All the states got dust storms so much we all started to call them to“Dust Bowls.” Unfortunately not everyone could get up and move, most farmers were forced to stay. Since the farmers had to stay they had to make the most of what they had. The had no water for the crops, farm animals, or themselves.

Farmers did well after the Civil War and into the 1880s with plentiful rainfall and easy credit from banks. In the 1890s, however, American farmers suffered from drought, poor harvests, restrictive tariff and fiscal policies, low commodity prices, and competition from abroad. A downward swing in the business cycle exacerbated their plight, and many farmers in the Plains filed for

The Great Depression was a period of economic turmoil in the United States that lasted from 1929 until the end of World War II. The Great Depression reflected the economic crisis of the Stock Market’s sudden crash despite America’s economic steadiness for nearly a decade during the Roaring Twenties. Two long term causes of the Great Depression were the poor management and infrastructure of the banks and the overall production of agriculture. Farms prior to the Great Depression over produced during World War I in order to feed European nations, armies, and that overall process costed money. Corn and wheat were popular at the time for mass production which led to an increase of farmers taking out loans in order to expand the land. As more crops

Farmers where Some of the main people who were affected by not only the great depression , but the dust bowl as well. Farmers were getting paid by AAA to reduce the land used to raise livestock and to produce products such as corn, wheat, tobacco, etc,these were just some of the problems that farmers suffered. Another reason why this event affected the farmers is because of the fact that farmers over farmed their land trying to get it to grow which made it worse and all these dried up crops turned to dust layering their houses so they had to abonden their lifes to head west. Companies paid farmers to plant clover and alfalpha instead of cotton and wheat to reduce not only land usage, but under priced products. Last but not least one of

No rainfall led to a decrease in crop growth, affecting everyone in the Great Plains. For example, the amount of rainfall in Dullen County, Texas decreased significantly after 1923 (Doc E). The crops were not able to grow, meaning that the decreasing amount of rainfalls led to the livestock dying. Indeed, the individuals were drastically affected; the annual rainfall for the five Dust Bowl towns had an average of 17 inches- describing how rain was slowly disappearing. John Wesley Powell, a great Western explorer determined that the 20 inches of rain annually were the minimum for successful farming in the plains, this gives us the idea on the amount of rainwater need to farm. Once rain came to an end in the summer of 1951, many farmers experienced struggles with

`Many farmers settled in the Southern Plains and started to grow their crops their. The were prosperous for decades. The crops grew extremely well, and the farmers prospered. However when the 1930s hit, so did droughts and clouds of dust. They plagued nearly seventy-five percent of the U.S.

Thesis: The Dust Bowl of the 1930s forever changed how Americans thought of and treated our farm lands in the Great Plains.

Drought had caused the soil to become dry and loose by early 1930. This occurs mostly because the area most hurt by the Dust Bowl had once been grassland, in the early 1900s they had been converted into wheat lands because that was more lucrative. “…and the dust storms of the following decade revealed, a self-destructive culture, cutting away the ground from under people’s feet.” (Worster pg 44).

Arguing that the majority of farmers during the Great Depression benefitted from the government policies produced through President Roosevelt’s New Deal is an inaccurate claim. While history textbooks highlight the improvement of finances for people in rural areas in the United States of America, the personal experiences of family farmers contradict those textbooks. Writers of textbooks about American history should consider looking further into the delicate topic of how the Great Depression effected common farm families. In the West, farmers endured the Dust Bowl. In the North, people in rural areas competed to make a profit. Although statistics show the most economic damage of the Great Depression beginning at the end of 1929, small farm families refer to the effects of the Depression dating back as early as 1925 since government policies mostly benefitted large farm industries as small farms were forced to foreclose.

Life for people during the Canadian Great Depression of the early 1930 's had the worst living conditions of any Canadians in the 20th century. No country was hit as severely as Canada due to its strong dependence on raw material, farm exports, and the aftermath of the Prairies drought. This left thousands of Canadians starving and often homeless, as the social and economic shock, left millions of Canadians unemployed. Canadians living through the worldwide depression of the 1930 's dealt with the worst living conditions for any Canadians in the 20th century.

Total unemployment rose from just over three percent in 1929 to just over twenty five percent in 1933, and did not increase back up to just over seventeen percent in 1939. By 1933 wages had fallen in every industry, with construction being affected the worst, where wages had dropped by half. Wages in 1933 were twenty five percent lower than in 1929. These decreases in wages caused decreases in purchasing across the board. Durable and nondurable sales alike decreased. Nondurable goods fell by forty one percent, where durable goods suffered the most and declined by sixty two percent. In the midst of the depression farmers also had a difficult time where usually they would have been able to survive. Unfortunately, the Great Plains were hit hard with both a drought and dust storms. The dust storms destroyed everything in their paths, leaving farmers without their crops. Small farmers were hit the hardest. Even before the dust storms hit, the invention of the tractor drastically cut the need for manpower on farms. The small farms were usually already in debt, borrowing money for seed and paying it back when their crops came in. When the dust storms damaged the crops, not only could the small farmer not feed himself or his family, he could not pay back his debt. Banks would foreclose on the farms and the farmer and his family would be both homeless and unemployed. Millions of people were out of work across the United States. Many people hit the road

Therefore, the ultimate cause of such a climatic event was that farmers were not careful, and plowed up all the prairie grass and replaced it with wheat. Then, the wheat was not capable of surviving a drought like the prairie grass and died. This left nothing but rough topsoil that was not used to wind. These winds eroded the soil causing dust storms which ultimately led up to the Dust Bowl. In an article