The dust bowl Essay Example For Students

The dust bowl Essay Dust Bowl, common name applied to a large area in the southern part of the Great Plains region of the United States, that got much dust storms in the1930s. The area included parts of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. In its original state, the region was covered with hardy grasses that held the fine-grained soil in place in spite of the long recurrent droughts and occasional torrential rains characteristic of the area. A large number of homesteaders settled in the region in the 30 years before World War I, planting wheat and row crops and raising cattle. Both of these land uses left the soil exposed to the danger of erosion by the winds that constantly sweep over the gently rolling land. We will write a custom essay on The dust bowl specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now Beginning in the early 1930s, the region suffered a period of severe droughts, and the soil began to blow away. The organic matter, clay, and silt in the soil were carried great distances by the winds, in some cases darkening the sky as far as the Atlantic coast, and sand and heavier materials drifted against houses, fences, and barns. In many places 8 to 10 cm (3 to 4 in) of topsoil were blown away. Many thousands of families, their farms ruined, migrated westward; about a third of the remaining families had to accept government relief. Beginning in 1935 intensive efforts were made by both federal and state governments to develop adequate programs for soil conservation and for rehabilitation of The dust bowl Essay. The measures taken have included seeding large areas in grass; 3-year rotation of wheat and sorghum and of lying fallow; the introduction of contour plowing, terracing, and strip planting; and, in areas of greater rainfall, the planting of long shelter belts of trees to break the force of the wind. . The Dust Bowl Essay Example For Students The Dust Bowl Essay The Dust Bowl Essay was the darkest moment in the twentieth-century life of the southern plains, (pg. 4) as described by Donald Worster in his book The Dust Bowl. It was a time of drought, famine, and poverty that existed in the 1930s. Its cause, as Worster presents in a very thorough manner, was a chain of events that was perpetuated by the basic capitalistic societys need for expansion and consumption. Considered by some as one of the worst ecological catastrophes in the history of man, Worster argues that the Dust Bowl was created not by natures work, but by an American culture that was working exactly the way it was planned. We will write a custom essay on The Dust Bowl specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now In essence, the Dust Bowl was the effect of a society, which deliberately set out to take all it could from the earth while giving next to nothing back. The Dust Bowl existed, in its full quintessence, concurrently with the Great Depression during the 1930s. Worster sets out in an attempt to show that these two cataclysms existed simultaneously not by coincidence, but by the same culture, which brought them about from similar events. Both events revealed fundamental weaknesses in the traditional culture of America, the one in ecological terms, the other in economic. (pg. 5) Worster proposes that in American society, as in all others, there are certain accepted ways of using the land. He sums up the capital ethos of ecology into three simply stated maxims: nature must be seen as capital, man has a right/obligation to use this capital for constant self-advancement, and the social order should permit and encourage this continual increase of personal wealth (pg. 6) It is through these basic beliefs that Worster claims the plainsmen ignored all environmental limits, much like the brokers and investors on Wall Street ignored a top-heavy economy. Worster explains that our business-oriented society began to transform farming into a mass-producing industrial machine, becoming another excess of free enterprise that not even Roosevelts New Deal could remedy. The dirty thirties, as many called it, was a time when the earth ran amok in southern plains for the better part of a decade. This great American tragedy, which was more devastating environmentally as well as economically than anything in Americas past or present, painstakingly tested the spirit of the southern plainsmen. The proud folks of the south refused at first to accept government help, optimistically believing that better days were ahead. Some moved out of the plains, running from not only drought but from the new machine-controlled agriculture. As John Steinbeck wrote in the bestseller The Grapes of Wrath, it was not nature that broke the people-they could handle the drought. It was business farming, seeking a better return on land investments and buying tractors to pursue it, that had broken these people, smashing their identity as natural beings wedded to the land.(pg. 58) The machines, one-crop specialization, non-resident farming, and soil abuse were tangible threats to the American agriculture, but it was the capitalistic economic values behind these land exploitations that drove the plainsmen from their land and created the Dust Bowl. Eventually, after years of drought and dust storms, the plains people had to accept some form of aid or fall to the lowest ranks of poverty in the land, and possibly perish. The government set up agency after agency to try and give federal aid to the plains farmers. Groups such as the Farm Credit Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the Land Utilization Project, and the Agricultural Adjustment program, among others, were formed to give the plainsmen some sort of relief from the hardships of the Dust Bowl. In Cimarron county, Oklahoma 306 households were drawing government relief in June 1934: 60 of them were paid entirely in commodities, the rest mostly in cash (pg. 131). Roosevelt and the government continually contrived ways to give the plains aid, and when the Supreme Court ruled that a certain agency was unconstitutional, Roosevelt simply created another one in its place. In the end, Worster argues, the government agencies did not improve the lot of the large number of poor, marginal farmers, and in fact, none of the federal activities altered much of the factory-like culture of the plains. .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327 , .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327 .postImageUrl , .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327 .centered-text-area { min-height: 80px; position: relative; } .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327 , .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327:hover , .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327:visited , .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327:active { border:0!important; } .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327 .clearfix:after { content: ""; display: table; clear: both; } .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327 { display: block; transition: background-color 250ms; webkit-transition: background-color 250ms; width: 100%; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #95A5A6; } .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327:active , .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327:hover { opacity: 1; transition: opacity 250ms; webkit-transition: opacity 250ms; background-color: #2C3E50; } .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327 .centered-text-area { width: 100%; position: relative ; } .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327 .ctaText { border-bottom: 0 solid #fff; color: #2980B9; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0; padding: 0; text-decoration: underline; } .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327 .postTitle { color: #FFFFFF; font-size: 16px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; padding: 0; width: 100%; } .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327 .ctaButton { background-color: #7F8C8D!important; color: #2980B9; border: none; border-radius: 3px; box-shadow: none; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 26px; moz-border-radius: 3px; text-align: center; text-decoration: none; text-shadow: none; width: 80px; min-height: 80px; background: url(https://artscolumbia.org/wp-content/plugins/intelly-related-posts/assets/images/simple-arrow.png)no-repeat; position: absolute; right: 0; top: 0; } .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327:hover .ctaButton { background-color: #34495E!important; } .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327 .centered-text { display: table; height: 80px; padding-left : 18px; top: 0; } .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327 .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327-content { display: table-cell; margin: 0; padding: 0; padding-right: 108px; position: relative; vertical-align: middle; width: 100%; } .u7bfc25d4e7bd9172f07919622b975327:after { content: ""; display: block; clear: both; } READ: Peer Pressure Essay .