Cotton goods are eventually included to clothe the needy as well. During the strike, two men and one woman are killed and hundreds injured. In the settlement, the union is recognized by growers, and workers are given a 25 percent raise.
May Great dust storms spread from the Dust Bowl area. The drought is the worst ever in U. June 28, Roosevelt signs the Taylor Grazing Act, which allows him to take up to million acres of federally-owned land out of the public domain and establish grazing districts that will be carefully monitored.
One of many New Deal efforts to heal the damage done to the land by overuse, the program is able to arrest the deteriorationsc but cannot undo the damage that has already been done. This act restricts the ability of banks to dispossess farmers in times of distress. Originally effective until , the act will be renewed four times until , when it will expire. January 15, The federal government forms a Drought Relief Service to coordinate relief activities.
Those unfit for human consumption — more than 50 percent at the beginning of the program — are destroyed. The remaining cattle are given to the Federal Surplus Relief Corporation to be used in food distribution to families nationwide. A series of drought years followed, further exacerbating the environmental disaster. By , an estimated 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land had been rendered useless for farming, while another million acres—an area roughly three-quarters the size of Texas—was rapidly losing its topsoil.
Regular rainfall returned to the region by the end of , bringing the Dust Bowl years to a close. The economic effects, however, persisted. Population declines in the worst-hit counties—where the agricultural value of the land failed to recover—continued well into the s. Some of these carried Great Plains topsoil as far east as Washington , D. Billowing clouds of dust would darken the sky, sometimes for days at a time. In many places, the dust drifted like snow and residents had to clear it with shovels.
Dust worked its way through the cracks of even well-sealed homes, leaving a coating on food, skin and furniture. Estimates range from hundreds to several thousand people. On May 11, , a massive dust storm two miles high traveled 2, miles to the East Coast, blotting out monuments such as the Statue of Liberty and the U.
The worst dust storm occurred on April 14, News reports called the event Black Sunday. A wall of blowing sand and dust started in the Oklahoma Panhandle and spread east.
As many as three million tons of topsoil are estimated to have blown off the Great Plains during Black Sunday. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established a number of measures to help alleviate the plight of poor and displaced farmers. He also addressed the environmental degradation that had led to the Dust Bowl in the first place.
These programs put local farmers to work planting trees as windbreaks on farms across the Great Plains. Roughly 2. It was one of the largest migrations in American history. When droughts and harsh winters inevitably occurred, there was widespread economic hardship and human suffering, but the early settlers put these episodes behind them once the rains returned.
Although adverse conditions forced many settlers to return to the eastern United States, even more continued to come west. The idea that the climate of the Great Plains was changing, particularly in response to human settlement, was popularly accepted in the last half of the 19th century. It was reflected in legislative acts such as the Timber Culture Act of , which was based on the belief that if settlers planted trees they would be encouraging rainfall, and it was not until the s that this idea was finally abandoned White, Low crop prices and high machinery costs discussed in the previous section meant that farmers needed to cultivate more land to produce enough to meet their required payments.
Since most of the best farming areas were already being used, poorer farmlands were increasingly used. Farming submarginal lands often had negative results, such as soil erosion and nutrient leaching. By using these areas, farmers were increasing the likelihood of crop failures, which increased their vulnerability to drought. These economic conditions also created pressure on farmers to abandon soil conservation practices to reduce expenditures.
Furthermore, during the s, many farmers switched from the lister to the more efficient one-way disc plow, which also greatly increased the risk of blowing soil. Basically, reductions in soil conservation measures and the encroachment onto poorer lands made the farming community more vulnerable to wind erosion, soil moisture depletion, depleted soil nutrients, and drought.
Many of these measures were initiated by the federal government, a relatively new practice. Before the s drought, federal aid had generally been withheld in emergency situations in favor of individual and self-reliant approaches. This began to change with the development of the Great Depression in the late s and the inauguration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The programs had a variety of goals, all of which were aimed at the reduction of drought impacts and vulnerability:. President Roosevelt visiting a farmer who received a drought relief grant, Mandan, North Dakota, Photo by Arthur Rothstein. As important as these programs may have been, the survival of a majority of the families and enterprises undoubtedly rested solely with their perseverance and integrity. Whether they stayed or moved into the drought regions or migrated to other areas in hopes of a better life, families encountered new hardships and obstacles that would require ingenuity, resilience, and humility.
Those who remained in the drought regions were forced to endure severe dust storms and their health effects, diminished incomes, animal infestations, and the physical and emotional stress over their uncertain futures. Humor helped; tales about birds flying backward to keep from getting sand in their eyes, housewives scouring pots and pans by holding them up to keyholes for a sandblasting, and children who had never seen rain were among the favorite stories of Dust Bowl inhabitants.
In the end, it was a combination of willpower, stamina, humor, pride, and, above all, optimism that enabled many to survive the Dust Bowl.
The s drought and its associated impacts finally began to abate during spring By , most areas of the country were receiving near-normal rainfalls. These rains, along with the outbreak of World War II, alleviated many of the domestic economic problems associated with the s.
In fact, the new production demands and positive climatic conditions brought the United States into a rapid economic boom. Even though short-term conditions seemed to be relatively stable, this production growth had some drawbacks. One drawback described by Hurt, was that the start of World War II shifted remaining funds and priorities away from drought-related programs.
Men were taken off work programs to enter the armed forces and to produce for the war effort. Moreover, items such as gasoline and replacement parts were redirected from federal drought and conservation programs to the war efforts. This meant that conservation programs and research were significantly reduced during this period. Another drawback was that with the return of the rains, many people soon forgot about conservation programs and measures implemented during the s droughts.
This led to a return to some of the inappropriate farming and grazing practices that made many regions so vulnerable to drought in the s. Although the —89 drought was the most economically devastating natural disaster in the history of the United States Riebsame et al.
However, broad calculations and estimates can provide valuable generalizations of the economic impact of the s drought. Some would refer to the time as the Dirty Thirties, a near decade stretch of drought and dust. During that time, massive amounts of precious topsoil were eroded. But the soil had been enduring sustained damage long before that due to then-current farming practices.
In , the Homestead Act was passed, providing settlers with acres of land to farm. Similar programs would follow at the start of the s, leading to a rush of newer, less experienced farmers. In the Plains especially, farmers removed millions of acres of native grassland, replacing it with excessive wheat, corn, and other crops. The surplus of crops caused prices to fall, which then pushed farmers to remove natural buffers between land and plant additional crop to make up for it.
The farmland was overtaxed, excessively plowed, and unprotected. The soil was weak and drained of its nutrients.
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