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Similarities Between The Great Depression And The Dust Bowl

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The Dust Bowl, was a catastrophic event that affected millions of people in the plain areas of the central United States. Another great event that happened around the time of the Dust Bowl was the Great Depression which itself was the crash of the stock market and left most the population the Unites States struggling to live day by day. These two completely separated events seem to be not linked what so ever due to their differences, but for Donald Worster, the author of the book Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s, there are many other factors to take into account, in his argument he specifies,” Is that there was in fact a close link between the Dust Bowl and the Depression… That the same society produced them both, and for similar …show more content…

While the ones that left were facing new and unknown areas the ones that stayed had to deal with a land that had no life and the winds full with sand that killed whatever they could produce from the soil. The land that was left, houses, plains or farmlands turned back to nature, with no one to keep exploiting the land, the land started to repair itself.
Nature had reached its maximum and it was made clear to the communities at this time, that nature was not the limitless bank of resources they had thought before. People now understood the damage that the land had been facing for so many years of exploitation. “Man’s adaptation to nature in never a matter of technical understanding and inventiveness.” (Worster, 175) Man adapts to nature through trial and error, much like Worster expresses, people from the affected communities learned how to adapt to nature, learned how even something so natural as soil can become over

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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.

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363 Words | 2 Pages

The dust bowl was considered the “Worst hard time” in american history. The Dust Bowl was a big cloud of dust that took place during the 1930’s in the middle of the Great Depression. The dust bowl was located in the southern great plains as it affected states like Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. The three main causes of the Dust Bowl were drought (Doc E), amount of land being harvest (Doc D), and the death shortgrass prairie (Doc C).

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950 Words | 4 Pages

For farming families of the Southern Plains, the plight of the Great Depression was made all the more harrowing by the onset of the Dust Bowl, as readers of The Grapes of Wrath will remember well. But, for environmental historian Donald Worster, the twin calamities of the Depression and the Dust Bowl were no unlucky coincidence. " My argument," Worster declares, "is that there was a in fact a close link between the Dust Bowl and the Depression -- that the same society produced them both, and for similar reasons. Both events revealed fundamental weaknesses in the traditional culture of America, the one in ecological terms, the other in economic.

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The Dust Bowl negatively affected people in an economic way. How Drought played a big role in The Dust Bowl “ Federal aid to the drought-affected states was first given in 1932, but the first funds marked specifically for drought relief were not released until the fall of 1933. In all, assistance may have reached $1 billion (in 1930s dollars) by the end of the drought (Warrick et al., 1980). “ ( Source - http://drought.unl.edu/DroughtBasics/DustBowl/EconomicsoftheDustBowl.aspx )

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1077 Words | 5 Pages

This over farming diminished the nutrients in the ground and removed all of the grass and sod holding the dirt in place which resulted in it creating the giant dust storms. Storms like this have happened in the past but not to the same degree. He mentions how the climate in the Southern Plains is problematic as there is little rain and every so many years there are big storms that tear throughout the area. The difference between the storms that occurred before the Dust Bowl, is that there was grass and sod keeping the soil in place instead of just bare earth with shallow roots for anything that managed to cover the earth. Worster claims capitalism and the farming practices are responsible for this as the farmers strive to make a profit without caring about the state of the land is in.

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On the other hand, as the story of Ceremony progresses, Tayo’s Native American cultural background affects his morality. In the beginning, during a conversation Tayo has with his uncle Josiah, the book states, He pointed his chin at the springs and around at the narrow canyon. “This is where we come from, see. This sand, this stone, these trees, the vines, all the wildflowers. This earth keeps us going.”

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The Dust Bowl was a very pro-founding topic in American history. It was a period of severe dust storms that occurred in the American Great Plains during the years 1930-1936. Donald Worster wrote a scholarly book, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s, that reflects on the drastic effects of the event. Worster also offers his reasoning as to why the Dust Bowl happened. He claims, “The dust bowl was the darkest moment in the 20th century life of the southern plains...

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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.

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The Dust Bowl and the Great Depression both had many noteworthy social and economic effects on life in the 1930’s. “The Great Depression was the deepest and longest lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western Industrialized world.” (History.com) This economic devastation was caused in large part by nationwide bank failures and illegitimate stock trading practices leading to the infamous Stock Market Crash of 1929. The Depression had depleted the monetary savings of millions of families nationwide, forcing them into a life of poverty.

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Scientist and author, Jared Diamond, in his example essay, “The Ends of the World as We Know Them,” discusses fallen societies in the history of the world and their relation to one another. Diamond’s purpose is to open the eyes of the reader on the importance of recognizing how the ancient societies failed and ways to avoid the same situation. He selects a thought provoking tone in order to catch the attention of a wide range of readers. Before the first paragraph, is a short section on the background of Jared Diamond, adding credibility(ethos) to his essay by giving his credentials.

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The timing of the Dust Bowl was also rather untimely since it occurred during the Great Depression, the longest lasting economic slump in the history of the United

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While the great depression and the Dust Bowl contributes to the downfall of the “Okies” the problems for the farmers started many years before that. During World War I food supplies were in demand due to the closed European markets, farmers were compelled to invest heavily to invest in land and machinery to meet the demand of the market. Once the war was done the prices of their crops dropped significantly which left the farmers unable to repay the hefty loans they took out from the banks. Therefore while the economy was booming before the great depression at the end of the 1920’s, farmers were experiencing very harsh times and had their assets and land seized by banks and private sectors. Like the Joads, they were evicted from their land and

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1291 Words | 6 Pages

“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.

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What is the Agrarian Myth? Before this research assignment, I had only heard the term “agrarian myth” maybe once or twice. However, I was aware that Thomas Jefferson had quite the green thumb and played a huge role on how agriculture is practiced today. The Agrarian Myth, as defined by Richard Hofstadter, “was fashioned for the new nation a folk hero, the yeoman farmer, who was admired not for his capacity to exploit opportunities and make money but rather his ability to produce a simple abundance”.

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“I Was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move” written by Louise Erdrich focuses on a child and a grandfather horrifically observing a flood consuming their entire village and the surrounding trees, obliterating the nests of the herons that had lived there. In the future they remember back to the day when they started cleaning up after the flood, when they notice the herons without their habitat “dancing” in the sky. According to the poet’s biographical context, many of the poems the poet had wrote themselves were a metaphor. There could be many viable explanations and themes to this fascinating poem, and the main literary devices that constitute this poem are imagery, personification, and a metaphor.

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