The United States was in troubled times in 1929. In this year, during its already struggling economy, the stock market crashed. This one event created a domino effect, and other troubling events followed. One example of the tragedies was the drought, and the dust storms. James Gregory, the author of American Exodus writes, The most spectacular feature of the drought, the awesome dust storms which blackened the sky over much of the central United States on numerous occasions during 1933 and 1935, actually affected relatively few farms in the Southwestern states. The area of severe wind erosion, soon known as the Dust Bowl, compromised a section of the wheat belt near the intersection of Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma and Texas panhandles.”(Gregory,
The Dust Bowl had ruined any chance of farmers in those regions being able to farm, because of that they were forced to relocate to be able to survive. This created what is known as the Dust Bowl Migration. During the 1930’s and 1940’s these people decided to travel west to California in search of work. However, they did not receive the welcoming they might have
Mexican farm workers were demanding higher wages. Mexican women played key roles in the strike. Weber writes, “from the beginning of the strike women of all ages--older women,with long hair who wore the rebozos of rural Mexico, younger women who had adopted flapper styles, and young girls barley in their teens--went on the picket lines.”(Weber, 96). Their jobs were to stop the strike breakers. They would do things such as taunt them, and in some situations it would become very violent. The strike would end, but the stories of what these women did still
The 1930 's was a time of despair and devastation, leaving millions in ruins. America was at an all time low during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The stock market had crashed and a severe drought turned into a disastrous storm. The 1930 's effected the nation and nobody knew the answer to the million dollar question, what caused Americas downfall? Historians have tried hard to solve the impossible puzzle and many have their theories, but the exact cause of the Dust Bowl continues to be unknown. At the core of understanding the Dust Bowl is the question of whose fault it was. Was it the result of farmers tilling land beyond what the environment could bear, or is it just a natural fluctuation in the atmosphere. These questions have
The “Dust Bowl Odyssey” presented an initial perspective of why families migrated from drought-ridden, Dust Bowl, areas to California. Edward Carr cautions, “Interpretation plays a necessary part in establishing the facts of history, and because no existing interpretation is wholly objective, on interpretation is a good as another, and the facts of history are in principle not amendable to objective interpretation” (Carr, 1961, p. 31). Historians had to separate the prejudices, assumptions, and beliefs of the times in order to have a more objective reasoning of the migration. The migration had valid evidence that supported against the theory of the Dust Bowl being the only contributor. Rather there were other historical contributions to
One major difference between the two events was the death toll. During the Dust Bowl, the major windstorms & dust-storms force dust into people's lungs. This caused a disorder called "Dust Pneumonia". According to Denver's Post: effects of the Dust Bowl, the Dust Bowl caused "7,000 people, men, women, and especially small children" to die from this disorder 'Dust Pneumonia'. During the 2012 drought, the number of deaths were much lower. There wasn't any dust-storms that caused Dust Pneumonia. Also, medical treatments and medicine have improved greatly since the
dust storms and were forced to migrate along Route 66 to California in search of work.
3. The dust bowl caused many people to leave plains state and move to California. Two hundred thousand people moved to California and inflated the population. In Los
What Caused the Dust Bowl? One of America’s most beloved books is John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. The book portrays a family, the Joads, who leave Oklahoma and move to California in search of a more prosperous life.
“The dust storms that swept across the southern plains in the 1930s created the most severe environmental catastrophe in the entire history of the white man on this continent.”(Location 445.) Had the area never been over worked and farmed to produce mass quantities of wheat and other crops the dust storms would never had happened. This is much like the economical blunder that caused the stock market crash of 1929 resulting in the Great Depression. Had the banks not been so eager to grow and approve credit and loans, essentially over working the money market, at an unusually high rate the stock market most likely would not have crashed. The causes of both the dust bowl and stock market crash were caused by the American society’s greed for wanting more than what they needed to sustain their way of
Latin@s both young and old worked for hours in the hot sun. Out in the fields they worked hard to earn a living, but they did not get paid what they deserved. They got paid very little by the farm laborers who profited a lot from their labor (source: University of Michigan). To fight against this unjust treatment, Chican@s went on strike and boycotted the California grapes. In document 1 it shows photographs of the United Farm Workers strike poster and the boycotts. Many people joined the strike and boycott to help support the cause and won. Both strategies showed to be very effective in getting the farm workers a fair pay and treatment (source: United Farm
The Dust Bowl was a treacherous storm, which occurred in the 1930's, that affected the midwestern people, for example the farmers, and which taught us new technologies and methods of farming. As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land." The early thirties opened with prosperity and growth. At the time the Midwest was full of agricultural growth. The Panhandle of the Oklahoma and Texas region was marked contrast to the long soup lines of the Eastern United States.
In the book Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s the author, Donald Worster, makes the argument that the Dust Bowl was a mostly a direct result of farmer’s methods and misuse of the fragile plains environment. However, there were many other largely contributing factors to the Dust Bowl. While the farmer’s methods played a role, other factors such as economic decline, unusually high temperatures, an extended drought accompanied by and economic depression, and the resulting wind erosion were all factors that help explain The Dust Bowl.
The Dust Bowl was also known as the “Dirty Thirties” which took its toll (Dunn n. pag.). The decade from the Dust Bowl was filled with extreme conditions such as tornadoes, floods, droughts, and dirt storms. The Dust Bowl occurred in the midwestern states of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. Within these states the conditions affected many peoples lives. The Dust Bowl had gotten its name after Black Sunday, April 14,1935( Ganzel n. pag.). While traveling through the midwest a reporter named Robert Geige, wrote, “Three little words achingly familiar on a western farmer’s tongue, rule life in the Dust Bowl of the continent- if it rains” (The Drought n. pag.). People back then used the term Dust Bowl to help describe the people that lived in the hard times of the drought stricken region during the Great Depression. The Dust Bowl is still a term we use today to describe the harsh times of the droughts and dirt storms. The Dust Bowl was a harsh time to live in, it affected many things such as: the way people lived and farming.
A time in America’s history was made dark by an economic downfall. The Great Depression made life almost unbearable for most people living in the 1930’s. The stock market crash started on Tuesday October 29, 1929, it is also known as “Black Tuesday”. The stock market crash is known as the worst economic collapse in the history of the modern industrial world (“The Great Depression”). The Great Depression was a deep economic crisis that began in 1929 and lasted until the nation’s entry
The stock market crash of October 1929 was the prelude to the Great Depression. It was a time of hardship and sorrow for many people. American morale was low, and money and food were scarce. Poverty and despair, however, were not foreign to the Black Americans; poverty had been common to them since their days of captivity. To many Black Americans who lived in the south, it was the return of old times.
In this time was founded the first major union group for women known has the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). Even with this first organized women union their influence was weak and not being able to gather in protest to fight back properly. No shop representatives so gathering complaints about wages and work conditions couldn’t happen. Most of their fights were aimed at import legislation, cheap foreign imports and high rent. Furthermore, this leads to this union group rise and fall. The ILGWU masses the largest protest in American history with 20,000 seamstresses walking off their jobs because of the conditions they were forced to work in. But sadly with limited organizing experience awarded them little form management. At this time the union group were young Jewish women. I believe this because in 1911 a disaster happen that took the lives of 146 young Jewish women known as “Triangle Shirtwaist Fire”. Which escalated their organizing efforts, leading its members to become the highest paid workers, with union clinics, low rent housing and huge retirement plans. But the rights of the unionize workers weren’t protected. When it came to racial matters things were different. African American and Puerto Rican workers weren’t active union members and received lower wages than the white union members during this time. Many Puerto Rican women were sexually harassed. Both groups were also fined and threatened to be fired. Which lead to the two groups wanting decertify by the
After viewing different perspectives on all three events, the Dust Bowl seems by far the worst for several reasons. These reasons are: having trapped people with little supplies for 10 years long, losing loved ones and people they cared about, getting their crops abducted along with most of there animals they could not longer care for, and their financial investment was ravaged and so was most of their lives. The dust bowl was hard to get away from because you couldn't see you food storage died away dust killed whatever was outside for too long and it stretched for miles. We reflect on the past to survive to solve future problems the dust bowl could happen again.