History 226 Final
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1. During the 1930s, an epidemic like no other started to boil across the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl was an unfortunate period in areas across the Midwest that greatly affected many territories. This event occurred due to the lack of anything present in the ground combining with the high winds caused a serious of blinding dust storms. Unfortunately, this led to much the ruining of farms causing farmers to lose much of their crops in addition to sums of money. The New Deal would ultimately be established to help those farmers that lost everything through different programs. One of the most significant parts of this event is that it forced the United States government to get involved in farming throughout the Midwest.
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This awareness continually picked up steam between the 1950’s into the 1980’s. Although this is true we can still contribute some factors to earlier encounters such as the water restrictions in addition to the events of the Dust Bowl and what came after it. However, as time moved on environmental movements began to initiate even further. Ultimately causing the legislative decisions increasing the involvement of the United States government in the West forever. This movement changed the way Americans thought about and understood the issues of the …show more content…
Many different Wilderness preservation acts are but in place with certain acts and restrictions throughout the 1960s and 1970s. These acts did not just affect one realm of environmentalism. They would go on to affect air, water, animals, in addition to land across the country. We even see the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 as potentially the greatest achievement. However, times were not always so perfect for the environmentalism movement. This is specifically relevant when talking about James Watt who was the secretary of the interior at the time under then President Reagan. Watt was deemed a brilliant guy who was very much for economic development rather than protect the environment. Later he would deem that environmentalists were outside the American mainstream. Reagan would also go on to eventually underfund programs in the EPA causing it to lose nearly a third of its budget. Although the progress was great Reagan and Watt began to shift the tide as the 1980’s
The region later became known as the dust bowl. The election of Franklin D Roosevelt and the introduction of the new deal in 1932 helped restore the confidence in the United States and marked the beginning of the end of the depression there. In many countries the great depression resulted in a big shift in public attitudes and in government policy towards welfare provision. The second reason was the unpopularity of Hoover. Hoover was the 31st president of the United States and held office during the great depression.
The rise of conservation was first populated by Theodore Roosevelt in the late 19th century. And the issues surrounding conservation had risen in the US around that time. The new understanding affects the country and its policies. Conservation is a careful preservation and protection of something; especially: planned management of a natural resource to prevent exploitation, destruction, or neglect.(Merriam-Webster) The causes of rising conservation include overhunting, recognizing its importance. These newfound awarenesses resulted in new policies that preserve for everyone equally.
Boone, Lynette. "Dust Bowl and the Great Depression." Roll On Columbia the Documentary. UO Media Services, n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2013.
In fact, the expenses were coming out of the rich class pockets and angered rich American families. Furthermore, the Wagner Act of 1935 caused problems in the relationship between the factory owners and government because business was not prepared to face all the new restrictions implied by the laws in this deal. It was argued that the “New Deal initiative to improve wage levels could not be successful if company unionism were permitted because an employee organization limited to a single employer deprived workers of critical information about national labor markets and business conditions and because employee representatives could never be wholly free to bargain with the employer who controlled their livelihood” (Cooper 861). However, it was also affecting the benefiters such as farmers who disliked being controlled and were forced to dismiss their corps to avoid the over production. In fact, droughts caused more tension in the agriculture sector due to the high regularity practices.
It was in the 70s, that environmental issues made their appearance in the global theatre and were presented as challenges. Mainly, it was during UN Conference on Human Environment in 1972, when countries decided general principles to fight environmental degradation.
Theodore Roosevelt: The Great Environmentalist This Paper will outline President Theodore Roosevelt’s role in helping to conserve our environment during his administration (1901-1909). It will also examine his theory of a stronger American democracy through environmental conservationism. “The movement for the conservation of wildlife, and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources, are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.” (Roosevelt 274)
The Great Depression of 1929 to 1940 began and centered in the United States, but spread quickly throughout the industrial world. The economic catastrophe and its impact defied the description of the grim words that described the Great Depression. This was a severe blow to the United States economy. President Roosevelt’s New Deal is what helped reshape the economy and even the structure of the United States. The programs that the New Deal had helped employ and gave financial security to several Americans. The New Deals programs would prove to be effective and beneficial to the American society.
An overview of the 1930's and how many Americans' lives were adversely impacted by the New Deal.
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 New Deal was a set of acts that effectively gave Americans a new sense of hope after the Great Depression. The New Deal advocated for women’s rights, worked towards ending discrimination in the workplace, offered various jobs to African Americans, and employed millions through new relief programs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) made it his duty to ensure that something was being done. This helped restore the public's confidence and showed that relief was possible. The New Deal helped serve America’s interests, specifically helping women, African Americans, and the unemployed and proved to them that something was being done to help them.
The Conservation movement was a driving force at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was a time during which Americans were coming to terms with their wasteful ways, and learning to conserve what they quickly realized to be limited resources. In the article from the Ladies’ Home Journal, the author points out that in times past, Americans took advantage of what they thought of as inexhaustible resources. For example, "if they wanted lumber for their houses, rails for their fences, fuel for their stoves, they would cut down half a forest at a time; and whatever they could not use or sell they would leave to rot on the ground. They never bothered their heads to inquire where more wood was coming from when this was gone" (33). The twentieth century opened with a vision towards the future, towards preserving the land that had previously been taken for granted. The Conservation movement came along around the same time as one of the first major waves of the feminist movement. With the two struggles going on: one for the freedom of nature and the other for the freedom of women, it stands to follow that they coincided. As homemakers, activists, and citizens of the United States of America, women have had an important role in Conservation.
In response to the Great Depression, the New Deal was a series of efforts put forth by Franklin D. Roosevelt during his first term as United States’ President. The Great Depression was a cataclysmic economic event starting in the late 1920s that had an international effect. Starting in 1929 the economy started to contract, but it wasn’t until Wall Street started to crash that the pace quickened and its effects were being felt worldwide. What followed was nearly a decade of high unemployment, extreme poverty, and an uncertainty that the economy would ever recover.
Coming into the 1930’s, the United States underwent a severe economic recession, referred to as the Great Depression. Resulting in high unemployment and poverty rates, deflation, and an unstable economy, the Great Depression considerably hindered American society. In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt was nominated to succeed the spot of presidency, making his main priority to revamp and rebuild the United States, telling American citizens “I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people," (“New” 2). The purpose of the New Deal was to expand the Federal Government, implementing authority over big businesses, the banking system, the stock market, and agricultural production. Through the New Deal, acts were passed to stimulate the economy, aid banks, alleviate environmental problems, eliminate poverty, and create a stronger central government (“New”1).
The Dust Bowl was "the darkest moment in the twentieth-century life of the southern plains," (pg. 4) as described by Donald Worster in his book "The Dust Bowl." It was a time of drought, famine, and poverty that existed in the 1930's. It's cause, as Worster presents in a very thorough manner, was a chain of events that was perpetuated by the basic capitalistic society's "need" for expansion and consumption. Considered by some as one of the worst ecological catastrophes in the history of man, Worster argues that the Dust Bowl was created not by nature's work, but by an American culture that was working exactly the way it was planned. In essence, the Dust Bowl was the effect of a society, which deliberately set out to take all it could from the earth while giving next to nothing back.
Imagine this, you are walking back from school, you are in the middle of nowhere no one beside you and suddenly the ground begins to shake, like an earthquake but even worse. A big cloud of dust begins to roll over the hills, running towards you at 60 miles per hour. You try to run but in your head you know you will never make it. You stop and look for a place to hide, there is nothing. You stick your head in your backpack and lie on the cold hard ground. You feel the stampede coming closer and closer. You hold your breath and begin to fly with the dust. You scream hoping for a chance to breath and stop and live, but no, you continue choking and flying till the storm passes.