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.
Evidence from Doc D, shows that over 100 million acres were harvested crops. How this was possible was advances in machinery. The tractor at the time was a new type of technology used to help farmers plant soil for crops. Since the soil was not watered because of the drought in the previous paragraph, this caused the soil to turn into dust.
A good theme is the dust bowl. Because the book talks about it a lot and the depression the people went through and what they did to survive the tactics of how and what they did to get the land back to be able to farm the land again. The book does a good job of showing the struggle that the people in the southern plains had to face in 1930 – 1936. Its show how the government tried to help people by giving the farmers and people that wanted to work bulldozers to turn the land. To try and get the bottom soil on top and the soil that turn to sand on the bottom in hope that the sand like soil would turn back into the rich dirt that it was before.
Eight, six, four, two--the Dust Bowl makes them go achoo. The articles “Letters for the Dust Bowl” by Caroline A. Henderson and "The Untold Stories of Those Who Survived The Great American Dust Bowl” By Timothy Egan describe the living conditions the civilians had to live through. Numerous people were affected by the living conditions of the Dust Bowl(Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture). First and foremost, the Dust Bowl affected the lives of the people who had to live through it because they were trying to keep the dust out of their houses so they would not get sick. Henderson stated, “Wearing our shade hats, with handkerchiefs tied over our faces and vaseline in our nostrils…”
Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930’s Donald Worster’s Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930’s was written by a Kansas Native who demonstrates the horrendous plague that destroyed the once prosperous plains in the American West. Worster depicts the primary reasons of the economical and agricultural struggles that generated the ‘Dirty 30’s’. In the Preface of the book Worster explains his reasoning for writing his book as ‘selfish’, due to the fact that he wrote it for himself in remembrance of the plains where he grew up. He explains the derivation of his information as so, “It is, however, based on not only on extensive library research, but on conversations with farmers, agronomists, and storekeepers;...”
Donald Worster is an environmental historian and his book Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s helped to define the environmental history movement as it was the first environmental history book published. He breaks the stereotype of how the Dust Bowl was viewed by writing it from an environmental standpoint instead of writing a social history by focusing solely on the people and their experiences. How it helped to define the environmental history movement is that it opened up this avenue for others to write about environmental issues. He is also an anti-capitalist and this book combines his interest in the environment with the effect that capitalism has on the environment.
Challenges, we add had this problem trying to get what is blocking your way to sesses or survival. Also with that they need so much determination to do it. With that determination you can do some big things. The articles that are in this essay are Fighting Poverty with Education, Escape from North Korea, And a clip from the documentary The Dust Bowl. In the dust bowl clip people were fighting and was determined to stay alive.
Through the completion of this project, my knowledge of the dustbowl has considerably expanded. I have learned about the dustbowl through textbook and lectures in class; however, this project has taught me the most about the dustbowl than any other source of information. This project improved my understanding of the dustbowl due to the fact that we used primary sources for our information. Primary sources allow us to get first-hand experience for any event and an actual account as to what happened. Although secondary sources helped my understanding of the dustbowl, primary sources gave me an actual representation of what occurred during the dustbowl through the use of providing interviews, photographs, and articles during the period of the dustbowl.
The livestock was another group that was affected in the dust bowl. When the AAA demanded the farmers to plow over there land they killed 6 million young pigs were slaughtered. Many of those pigs just starved because the farmers were no longer working so they could not feed them. When the dust bowl came money farmers and ranchers livestock were killed and when they cut them open there was only dust in there lungs and guts. The cattle grazing was reduced and millions of more acres were plowed and planted.
Dust Bowl and Economics of the 1930s The Dust Bowl was a very desperate and troublesome time for America. The southwestern territories were in turmoil due to the arid effect of the drought causing no fertile soils. As the rest of America was being dragged along with the stock market crash and higher prices of wheat and crops since the producing areas couldn't produce. This was a streak of bad luck for the Americans as they were in a deep despair for a quite some time.
While analyzing the nature of American stimulus, Scott Russell Sanders proclaimed, “But who would pretend that a history of migration has immunized the United States against bigotry?” (Sanders 40). Sanders was a firm believer that America had transformed into a state of take-and-abandon. He made several observations and analogies that highlighted the privation of conservatism. Sanders saw that when people fished a stream, they did not fish it with concern for population of the fish, they fished it until not a fish was left, before moving on to the next stream; when a farmer utilized a field, rather than caring for the field, when the soil quality dropped, the farmer would find somewhere new to settle.
After a period of time in the Dust Bowl the land was bare and could no longer be used for planting or farming and it was just sand. People’s personal lives were affected dreadfully. “The simplest acts of life — breathing, eating a meal, taking a walk — were no longer simple.”. The Dust Bowl was a eerie era caused by poor farming and a race for money, America hopes it will not happen
Knowing in the 1930’s, Can america survive another dust bowl? With this paper explaining great facts but persuasive ways of telling you why we can and would do to survive a dust bowl. ‘We are shown from the 1930’s to today's time of how we were drastically affected and how we were capable of surviving and making things back to normal if you know what i mean’. (“Dust Bowl History.com/topics” )
The dust bowl is very serious. “But in the summer of 1931, the rains disappeared. Crops withered and died. There had always been strong winds and dust on the Plains, but now over plowing created conditions for disaster. There was dust everywhere, because the people couldve worried about others than themselves.
“With the gales came the dust. Sometimes it was so thick that it completely hid the sun. Visibility ranged from nothing to fifty feet, the former when the eyes were filled with dirt which could not be avoided, even with goggles ”( Richardson 59). The Dust Bowl was a huge dust storm in the 1930s that stretched from western Kansas to New Mexico. People that lived in that area could not step outside or they would get dust in their lungs.
