Dust Bowl Effects

President Franklin D. Roosevelt once stated, “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” President Roosevelt said this quote during one of America’s greatest hardships, The Dust Bowl, and this quote explains how important agriculture is to the nation’s economy. The Dust Bowl started in 1930 and ended in 1939. These dust storms raged across the Midwest, mainly Arkansas Missouri, Nebraska, Louisiana, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, and Kentucky. The Dust Bowl had detrimental effects on the United States of America, the main aspects of The Dust Bowl include the economic factors, agricultural factors, Black Sunday, the impact on rural families, and the resolutions that helped fix the problem. Throughout history, a lot of problems

The Dust Bowl had a negative impact on rural families because most of them could not escape the effects of dust storms. According to Trimarchi, many farmers faced foreclosure on their land because they were not earning enough money on crops to pay back their debts (Trimarchi, 2018). The Dust Bowl also caused soil erosion across the plains which led to crop failure. Farmers were not able to make any profit with their failing crops, this contributed to many farmers losing their land due to foreclosure. According to Ganzel, it was common for families in the Midwest to only eat one-dish meals and most families relied on chicken eggs for food (Ganzel, 2003). Ganzel also stated that kids often wore clothes made from flour sacks and dust pneumonia killed a lot of people across the Midwest (Ganzel, 2003). Parents would use flour sacks instead of cloth to make their clothes for their kids because they did not have to pay for the flour sacks. Farmers and their families would inhale the dust in the air and this would lead to a build-up of grit in their lungs eventually causing dust pneumonia. According to Roop, daily life was very hard for people that lived during The Dust Bowl (Roop, 2012, p.26). For instance, people taped wet sheets to their windows to keep the dust out, and dinnerware was kept overturned until dinner was ready to avoid eating dust. It was also a struggle for

This statement can be proven by looking at the steps taken by the United States government to help stop The Dust Bowl. According to Trimarchi (2018), “In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted the first of several mortgage and farming relief acts under the New Deal aimed to reduce foreclosures and keep farms afloat during the drought.” These acts included the Taylor Grazing Act, Civil Conservation Corps, Work Progress Administration, and Natural Resource Conservation Service (Trimarchi, 2018). The Taylor Grazing Act allowed the government to protect 140 acres in the Midwest, this land was used to for the rehabilitation and conservation of the soil with the help of grazing. The Civil Conservation Corps was a group of men that planted trees and built reservoirs along the Midwest in order to stop the drought that was causing The Dust Bowl. The Works Progress Administration, WPA, was put in place by the government to give people jobs and this allowed them to stop their farmers from being foreclosed. Many farmers needed money because their crops were failing because of The Dust Bowl, but they could not find work anywhere. The WPA helped these farmers by giving them jobs building bridges, roads, airports, public parks, and roads. The Natural Resource Conservation Service encouraged farmers to replenish their soil by using irrigation system and crop