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causes of great depression apworld history
great depression causes and effects
Causes and effects of drought
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“In 1933, at the worst point in the Great Depression years, unemployment rates in the United States reached almost 25%, with more than 11 million people looking for work” ("The Causes and Effects of the Great Depression”). Immigrants migrated into the U.S., mainly in hopes of accomplishing the American Dream and living an opportunistic life. However, in the 1930s Americans became disillusioned and skeptical of their livelihood due to the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, which altered the American Dream into a desperate hope for survival. Following the Roaring Twenties, from 1920 to 1929, began the grueling Great Depression in which hundreds suffered from unemployment and a collapse in
Poor agricultural practices and years of drought caused the Dust Bowl, planting the same crop on the same area of land year after year caused the topsoil to become dusty, wind storms eroded the soil lifting dust into the air, thus creating the Dust Bowl ("The Dust Bowl” & “The Era of Arid Air"). By growing the same crop on the same land the soil became depleted in nutrients creating a dusty top layer. Despite their best efforts, farmers were unable to grow crops for there was no topsoil and no water because of the drought. Unable to grow crops, consequently many farmers could not afford to pay rent and without an income a “...quarter of the farmers fled the area, ...toward California, where they believed they would find plentiful work and better conditions.” ("The Dust Bowl” &” The Era of Arid Air"). This meant that a quarter of the farmers who supplied food for the U.S. fled the area resulting in a lack of food, therefore affecting the economy as well as those who depended on the food supplied by these farmers. For those who continued to inhabit the Southern plains the dust caused pneumonia when inhaled into the lungs and led to the death of both children and livestock ("The Dust Bowl” & “The Era of Arid Air"). In a pursuit to reduce the amount
History in Context. Ed. William A. Darity, Jr. Gale, 2008. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.
"The American Dream." What Is The American Dream? Library of Congress, n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2015.
"American Experience." PBS. PBS, 1996-2013. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.
"The Causes and Effects of the Great Depression - College Essays - 413 Words." StudyMode. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.
"Causes of the Great Depression." History in Context. Ed. Allison McNeill, Richard C. Hanes, and Shanon M. Hanes. Gale, 2003. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.
"The Dust Bowl & The Era of Arid Air." The Dust Bowl & The Era of Arid Air. Texas Air Comfort, n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2015.
"New Deal." U.S. History in Context. Ed. Thomas Carson and Mary Bonk. Gale, 1999. Web. 18 Nov.
The Dust Bowl grazed across the Midwest of the United States, destroying the ecology and agriculture of the United States and Canadian Prairies"1. The Midwest had been experiencing a severe drought when the wind started to collect any loose dry dirt building up gigantic dust clouds. The 1920 's were so prosperous with many new inventions and lifestyles being adapted. Farmers now had the aid of a tractor to help plow the fields faster and farther.2 Was the newly plowed dirt the cause of the Dust Bowl, historian, Professor R. Douglas Hurt seems to think so.
In the 1930's, farmers in the Great Plains region began deep plowing and destroyed the top soil and natural grasses so that they would be picked up in the wind (Boundless.com 1) The Great Plains area consists of parts of Colorado, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. Also a combination of a long drought and high winds led to dust storms creating the dust bowl that affected many people. Dust storms are giant clouds of dust that are thrown into the air and gathered into clouds that flew violently across the Great Plains. One expert describes one of these dust storms saying, “One of the most frightening days during the decade of the Dust Bowl is referred to as Black Sunday. On April 14, 1935, what started out as a clear sunny day suddenly transformed into a giant black cloud on the horizon — a huge dust storm. Residents fled their morning chores and sought cover in cars, houses, and shelters before they would be blinded and en...
The Dust Bowl in the 1930s was a very horrific event in the Southern Plains region of the United States. This was a period of severe windstorms & dust-storms that would blow over hundreds of miles. This stripped the soil of nutrients, and damaged the ecology and agriculture of these American lands. The 2012 drought in the Central Great Plains was a period that lasted only 4 months, through May to August, that eclipsed the record of the Dust Bowl, for the driest period. The Dust Bowl and the 2012 drought compare and contrast in many ways.
There are several causes of the Great Depression which Michiel Horn touches on throughout his writings. The initial tool that he used to help understand the situation was to look at statistical data from that time. Through use of this data, a greater understanding of the physical hardships could be quantified and compared to present day. The reading begins with statistics about the shocking rate of unemployment. In 1933, at the height of the depression, the unemployment rate was between 19.3and 27 percent. The industrial activity in 1933 was only 57 percent of the average activity for the years 1925-29. The causes for the Great Depression were easy to see, but hard to fix. The problems included the inability of foreign countries to purchase surplus goods produced by other countries. Before the Great Depression, the British used this tactic to stabilize the market. Unfort...
The drought, being the single most devastating effect on planting crops in the Great Plains, proved to be a force of devastation for many years. Moreover, since there was little rain it was virtually impossible to plant anything that could survive the harvesting season during the dustbowl. If you have no rain and no moisture
1.The great depression was a time between late 1929 to 1939 and was completely ended during World War Two. It started with a series of events, most famously the Wall Street stock market crash, that induce poverty on the American citizens. It caused the downfall of the US economy.
...t Bowl. Unfortunately the circumstances in the Great Plains all came to a head resulting in a horrific ten years for citizens of the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl caused government and people to look at farming practices and to evaluate their output. These policies resulted in overproduction of crops causing the prices to fall. The conclusion of World War I and countries that stopped importing foods added to the pain the farmers were already feeling. Yet with the establishment of government policies such as the Federal Relief Administration and the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act and with drought coming to an end, the Dust Bowl came to an end. The American people knew that they needed to do everything that was possible to end the Dust Bow. Tom Joad, the lead character in The Grapes Wrath best sums it up “ I know this... a man got to do what he got to do.”
Following the decade of economic prosperity and peace of the Roaring 20’s was the 1930’s which is commonly known as the Great Depression, an era of distress and instability that played an effect on altering the social, political, and economical infrastructure of the United States. Before the Great Depression, the United States was a representation of a consumer-driven society, with people loaning money from banks, in order to pay for luxurious items, they could not afford. However, in 1929, the stock market crashed, resulting in the nationwide closures of multiple banks and marked as the begin of turmoil for Americans. With the burden of the nation on the backs of all Americans, the meaning of life was changed and people waited day by day for the government to act and steer the nation back on the track for economic and political stability and progress, to be a
Farming was the major growing production in the United States in the 1930's. Panhandle farming attached many people because it attracted many people searching for work. The best crop that was prospering around the country was wheat. The world needed it and the United States could supply it easily because of rich mineral soil. In the beginning of the 1930's it was dry but most farmers made a wheat crop. In 1931 everyone started farming wheat. The wheat crop forced the price down from sixty-eight cents/ bushels in July 1930 to twenty-five cents/ bushels July 1931. Many farmers went broke and others abandoned their fields. As the storms approached the farmers were getting ready. Farmers increased their milking cowherds. The cream from the cows was sold to make milk and the skim milk was fed to the chickens and pigs. When normal feed crops failed, thistles were harvested, and when thistles failed, hardy souls dug up soap weed, which was chopped in a feed mill or by hand and fed to the stock. This was a backbreaking, disheartening chore, which would have broken weaker people. But to the credit of the residents of the Dust Bowl, they shouldered their task and carried on. The people of the region made it because they knew how to take the everyday practical things, which had been used for years and adapt them to meet the crisis.
The drought caused a lot of unfavorable conditions for farmers in the southwest. In Worster’s book he says “Few of us want to live in the region now. There is too much wind, dirt, flatness, space, barbed wire, drought, uncertainty, hard work…” (Worster 105). The droughts caused many unfavorable condition throughout the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. Thus, roughly one-third of Texas and Oklahoman farmers left their homes and headed to California in search of migrant work. The droughts during the 1930s are a drastically misrepresented factor of the Dust bowl considering “the 1930s droughts were, in the words of a Weather Bureau scientist, the worst in the climatological history of the country.” (Worster 232) Some of the direct effects of the droughts were that many of the farmers’ crops were damaged by deficient rainfall, high temperatures, and high winds, as well as insect infestations and dust storms that accompanied these conditions. What essentially happened was that the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor, so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called “black blizzards.” The constant dry weather caused crops to fail, leaving the plowed fields exposed to wind erosion. The effects of the drought happened so rapidly and progressively over time that
...ture. So, in my opinion, the only way for the Dust Bowl to have been curtailed sooner would have been for the people there to stop "breaking" the land all together and let mother nature take over and fix herself. Of course, that would be asking the impossible since it would mean the plains people would have to give up, and lose to the capitalistic society of which they were trying to keep up with. Ultimately, every remedy that was attempted merely assisted in the growth of the Dust Bowl and of consumerism itself. Droughts and famine will come and go during our time here on earth, but we must learn to look to the earth for the remedy and give back to the earth what is rightfully hers-for capitalism cannot fill the needs of human life without the resources of the land.
Breathing made it difficult to breath due to the dust in the air. According to Cary Nelson, a professor at the University of Illinois, stated that “The simplest acts of life — breathing, eating a meal, taking a walk — were no longer simple”(Nelson). Due to the dust in the air many children wore dust masks to in from school (“Nelson”). For example Jayde Taylor a dedicated writer to the Dust Bowls stated, besides the crops and homes, the clogging of lungs with dirt caused “serious health issues”, which meant that breathing made it difficult for people (Taylor et al). Thousands of residents died from this, but no one actually knows (“The Dust Bowl Migration”). Fevers, lung disease, malnutrition, softening of bones caused by the Dust Bowl. Besides, this also leads to economic issues. Maria Trimarchi, holds a bachelor's degree in English from Skidmore College, she wrote “A post-World War I recession led farmers to try new mechanized farming techniques as a way to increase profits” (Trimarchi). Thus in 1934 farmer’s had already sold ten percent of their land, “Half of those sales were caused by the depression and drought” (Amadeo). Furthermore Robin A.Fanslow a journalist “Many independent farmers lost their farms when banks came to collect on their notes, while tenant farmers were turned out when economic pressure was brought to bear on large landholders” (Fanslow). They later increased their profits, but most “farmers
The occurrence of the Great Depression was an inevitable economic disaster that was caused by a variety of reasons and events that happened in the U.S. and across the world. The lack of diversification was one of the main causes of the Great Depression as the dependence on only certain industries like the automobile industry began years before; and because of the prolonged success of such industries, their demise could not have been predicted. World War I was an event that had a major impact on the Great Depression because of the complexity of the international debt owed to the U.S, and the decline of international trade. In addition, the failure of the bank system and the reckless investments that banks, businesses and the American public made contributed to the manifestation of the Great Depression.
"Great Depression in the United States." Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2001. CD-ROM. 2001 ed. Microsoft Corporation. 2001
First the northern plains were hit by the dry spell, but by July the southern plains were in the drought. Because of the late planting and early frost, much of the wheat was damaged when the spring winds of 1932 began to blow. The region was blasted by a horrible dirt storm, which killed almost all the wheat. Although the dirt storms were fewer in 1934, it was the year, which brought the Dust Bowl national attention. A severe storm blew dirt from Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas. In spite of the terrific storm in the year 1934 there was a satisfying break from the blowing dirt and tornadoes of the previous year. But nature had another trick up her sleeve, the year was extremely hot with new records being made. Before the year had run its course, hundreds of people in Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas had died from the heat. The weather in the Dust Bowl again made the national headlines. A description of this storm of coming was made by a farmer:" The storm causes a tremendous amount of damage and suffering mentally and physically some of the conditions were animals dying from dust in the lungs and people developing dust pneumonia.” A giant dust storm engulfs Oklahoma. These storms destroyed vast areas of the Great Plains farmland. The methods of fighting the dust were as many and varied as were the means of finding a way to get something to eat. Canned foods had became the only way anybody could eat. Every possible crack was plugged, sheets were placed over windows and blankets were hung behind doors. Often the places were so tightly plugged against the dust that the houses became extremely hot and stuffy. Men, women and children stayed in their houses and tied handkerchiefs over their noses and mouths. When they dared to leave, they added goggles to protect their eyes. Houses were shut tight, cloth was wedged in the cracks of the doors and windows but still the fine silt forced its way into houses, schools