Dust Bowl in the Great Plains
ABSTRACT
The nineteen thirties was the time of great tragedy and crisis in America. Together with the recession that hit its economic fields, an ecological and agricultural problem came next as drought brought the Dust Bowl. It was caused by environmental changes and man-made land degradation. The effects of the Dust Bowl added to the recession and downfall of the American economy, but have resulted to the development of technologies that helped agriculture. It was a remarkable moment for the west as it moulded what it is and where it is in the map of the world today.
INTRODUCTION
The Dust Bowl of the 1930s, or the Dirty Thirties, is the most severe case of drought on record in the Great Plains. The Southern Plains was vast as it extends more than a hundred million acres. It includes the states of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. The drought came not only in the southern parts, but also the whole of America. About fifteen million men and women were broke as the stock market crashed at the start of the century. For the people living on the city, it was instantly felt as people are out without shelter and food. For those in the rural areas, it all came down slowly as farmers does not have problem with food stock, but as the recession came in the urban cities, so does drought in the farmlands. Because of this, the recession grew bigger and hit harder (Worster, 2004). The Great Depression was felt even more which affected the whole world.
The Dust Bowl – A Time Line
The migrants of the southern plains witnessed a once luscious land abundant of shrubs, grasses, and rich soil. At the start of the nineteen hundreds, there was a sudden influx of migrants to these lands unaware of its vicious cycle of rain and drought. Feeling all lucky that they found the land, they enjoyed every profitable inch of the vast land and became unwary of what was coming for them.
The Dust Bowl was one of the effects of the great drought that affected the United States. The drought happened in three waves which happened in 1934, 1936, and 1939-40. Some of the areas in the higher plains were affected for eight years to a decade, continuously.
After the summer of 1931, rain did not fall upon the plains. As a result, plants and crops started to wither and die. No crop means bare soil which makes the dust storms worse as wind carries it in the air (Ganzel, 2003). It was described that the plains were known for its strong winds, but when the “black blizzards” came carrying topsoil that took thousands of years to pile up was blown and has covered the Southern Plains. Dust went down to everything – including the lungs of people and animals (PBS.org, n.d.). People tried different ways to protect themselves from the dust. They hanged wet sheets in front of their homes to filter dust. Windows were shut with tapes and rags but it did not stop the fine particles from coming in the houses (PBS.org, n.d.). They also thought that they could identify where the dusts were coming. Gray dusts were said to come from Colorado or New Mexico, red were from Oklahoma, and black were from Kansas. In 1932, it is reported that fourteen dust storms were to come and then thirty-eight in the following year.
When Franklin Roosevelt took over as president, the Congress was able to come up with the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 which puts the federal government behind it. This stabilized the banking industry. In the same year, the Emergency Farm Mortgage Act gave $200 million dollars to help farmers in refinancing their mortgages. In addition to this, the Farm Credit Act enabled the establishment of local bank and credit associations. At the time when famers from the plains were fleeing to California, the largest agricultural strike commenced. Cotton workers of the Cannery Agricultural Workers Industrial Union or CAWIU boycotted from work for 24 days. Three died and hundreds were injured before the union was recognized. The settlement gave the workers a twenty-five percent raise.
In the year 1934, the drought has already covered seventy-five percent of United States that includes twenty-seven of its state. Due to possible bankruptcy of banks, the Frazier-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act is approved to prevent them from divesting farmers. It was also announced that year that about 35 million acres of land for crop production have been destroyed, another hundred million acre which had lost its topsoil and another hundred rapidly suffering the same fate. Still, farmers continued tilling the soil waiting for the rain to come.
After almost a decade with no substantial rain, it finally poured in 1939. One of the residents in Kansas, Floyd Koen, described this scenario as an “emotional moment”. He added that when the rain came, it does not only mean itself but also the future (PBS.org, n.d.). By then, speculations that led to different researches about the cause of the Dust Bowl arise even years after the crisis.
The Environmental and Man-made Linkages
Drought is a natural occurrence in the plains. Mild droughts come every three to four years and extreme ones every twenty years. Along with this, it is also common that dust blows with the wind as the lands are dry and the particles are not too light to be dragged with it. Like mentioned earlier, having crops wither because of the drought have left the lands bare, with nothing to hold them together. Yet, it did not prepare the people for what was coming. Dust naturally comes with the air, but storms of dust are not. This phenomenon happened every day, for about ten years and it has made huge ramifications to everyone living in the Great Plains (Worster, 2004).
There were actually two types of dust storms that come, the blankets of dust called black blizzards and the one that come from time to time called sand blows. Black blizzards are like waves of muddy water that reaches as high as eight thousand feet. Moreover, Worster says that the blizzards are brought high by the arriving polar continental air mass and its generated atmospheric electricity. This kind of dust storm often comes with thunder and lightning, but the more frightening scenario were those that come in silence. It was described to be a terrifying site, according to Melt White, a resident of Texas at the time (PBS.org, n.d.). The more frequent dust storm comes blew out from the southwest by “low sirocco-like winds”.
In another study, a historical data reconstruction of the Dust Bowl showed its dynamical view which provided a depiction to understand its cause. According to the results obtained by the group, it is “undoubtedly was oceanic forcing” which triggered the blizzards. It is indicated that the spring storms could reflect Pacific influences, while summer storms were added influences by the Atlantic (Bro¨nnimann et al., 2009).
Aside from the environmental linkages among the climate, plants, and the soil of the plains, there were also man-related elements that contributed to the worsening of the situation. These include farming practices, the drowning economy, and social conditions. Land degradation is said to be the main player which caused the worsened crisis in the plains. The Dust Bowl was the inevitable of uncontrolled farming techniques. The exploitation of the land led to uncontrollable consequences. Another hypothesis points to the changes in the plants that are sown in the plain. Before the 1930s, the plains have been ploughed upon decades ago as the agricultural economy grew to the west. The drought-sensitive wheat that replaced drought-resistant prairie grass could not stand the soil. Without plans for drought and erosion control, crops died leaving the fields barren and vulnerable to wind erosion (Cook, Miller, & Seager, 2011). The exposure of the dry soil and its pulverization from repeated tillage may have also caused the lack in moisture to make it make it intact. Also, the plains lack blockage from the continuous flow of wind, therefore increasing wind velocity (Hansen & Libecap, 2003).
Furthermore, it is hypothesized that the dust storms and the loss of vegetation intensified the forced drought by La Niña and caused irregular patterns in the plain’s temperature and precipitation. Climate changes have also been linked to sudden vegetation changes and soil dust aerosols in other regions of the world, but its direct impact to the Dust Bowl is not clarified (Cook, Miller, & Seager, 2009).
The Impact of Dust Bowl
In his book Worcester described the whole scenario in Kansas as a blizzard approached.
A seven-year-old boy wandered away and was lost in the gloom; the search party found him later suffocated in a drift. A more fortunate child was found alive, tangled in a barbed wire fence.
Even though radio warnings were put up, Kansans ignored them and had to later on wander what had hit them. Trains got derailed, electric lights burned out, cars were covered with thick dust, and establishments were closed after the blizzard came.
During the Dust Bowl, an epidemic broke out in the region called dust pneumonia. People are coughing in and throwing up “clods of dirt as big around as a pencil” (PBS.org, n.d.). Animals were found dead buried in two-inch thick dust.
Together with the Great Depression that has been lingering even before the 1930s, the Dust Bowl resulted further to the diminishing economic status of America. One way to stabilize the prices of livestock was to slaughter over six million pigs which mostly went to waste. Because of this the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation was formed to pacify the outrage of the people. The surplus in the commodities was distributed to relief organizations.
Despite the recession, new technologies emerged from striving farmers who put up funds together. The technologies that emerged involve the use of irrigation (Ganzel, 2003). Likewise, Roosevelt signed the Taylor Grazing Act which allowed him to take up lands for grazing and close monitoring. These efforts were done to somehow reverse the damage because of land overuse. Even though the deterioration was put into halt, the historical damage left by the Dust Bowl is irreversible.
CONCLUSION
The Dust Bowl of 1930s has done great damage not only to America but also to the whole world. The impact is not narrowed down to one nation since it has affected every element tied to it – socially, economically, and also environmentally. The cause of the Dust Bowl is not just a natural calamity that victimized our land and people, but is also a man-made disaster.
At the present state, people should have learned how to manage and preserve the lands that are bestowed upon us. This has also shown that lack in discipline and too much confidence that everything will last has negative consequences and could incur damage as big as the Dust Bowl.
REFERENCES
About the Dust Bowl. (n.d.) Modern American Poetry. Retrieved from http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/depression/dustbowl.htm
Bro¨nnimann, S., Stickler, A., & Ross, T. (2009). Exceptional atmospheric circulation during the ‘‘Dust Bowl’’. Retrieved from Wiley Online Library http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL037612/pdf
Cook, B., Miller, R., & Seager, R. (2009). Amplification of the North American ‘‘Dust Bowl’’ drought through human-induced land degradation. PNAS. New York, NY.
Cook, B., Miller, R., & Seager, R. (2011) Did dust storms make the Dust Bowl drought worse?. Drought Research. Retrieved from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/dust_storms.shtml
Cook, B., Miller, R., & Seager, R. (2008). Dust and sea surface temperature forcing of the 1930s ‘‘Dust Bowl’’ drought. Retrieved from Wiley Online Library http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL033486/pdf
Surviving the Dust Bowl. (n.d.). American Experience. Retrieved from PBS Online http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/introduction/dustbowl-introduction/
Hansen, Z & Libecap, G. (2003). Small Farms, Externalities, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Nber Working Paper Series. Working Paper.
Ganzel, B. (2003). Drought! Retrieved from Wessels Living History Farm http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/water_01.html
Worster, D. (2004). Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press.
