Objective: To examine the causes and effects of the Dust Bowl.
Do Now: 1) Read the following section from John Steinbeck’s
The Grapes of Wrath.
“Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry:…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 all for land.
We ain’t foreign. Seven generations back Americans,
and beyond that Irish, Scotch, English, German. One of our
folks in the Revolution, an’ they was lots of our folks in the
Civil War – both sides. Americans.”
2) How many examples of tragedy can you identify?
Name them.
The Dust
Bowl
• During
the 1930’s,
the Great
Plains
suffered
from
deadly dust
storms.
Causes of the Dust Bowl:
• Overgrazing by cattle and plowing by farmers destroyed the
grasses that once held down the soil.
• The loose soil, a drought, and high winds helped to cause the
Dust Bowl.
Dust Storms: "Kodak view of a dust storm” Baca Co.,
Colorado, Easter Sunday 1935
Dust Storms; "One of South Dakota's Black Blizzards, 1934"
Farmer and
sons, dust
storm,
Cimarron
County,
Oklahoma,
1936.
Photographer:
Arthur
Rothstein.
Imogene Glover: The Roof Falls In
One night when I was sleeping in a little room,
my mother and dad were in the big room with
my baby sister in bed. And the ceiling started
falling in with the dust so heavy on it. It
literally covered up the bed, but when they -they got out okay, 'cause Daddy yelled at
Mother. He could hear it comin' down and he
said, "Grab that kid, Mom." And he took her
-- they all got outside as soon as they knew
that the ceiling was fallin' in as a result of the
dust sifting in. And I think I told someone the
dust was just like face powder. It was so heavy
and thick. It wasn't like sand. It was just real
heavy, like face powder. Only it was real dark,
almost black.
Melt White: Black Sunday - It's on a Sunday
afternoon about six o'clock. And we was
gittin' prepared to go to church and went to
church in a team and wagon. And I'd gone
out to kinda tend the chickens and stuff and back in the
north it was just a little bank, oh, like about eight or ten feet
high. We had one of those headers out on each end, you
know. And I did a few things there around the chickens and
everything and went back in the house and I said, "Dad, we
ain't goin' to be able to go to church tonight." And he said,
"Why?" And that's how fast it's travelin'. And we was livin'
in an old house that was 14 feet wide, 36 foot long, just one
room, board and batten with a washed roof on it. It kept
gittin' worse and worse and wind blowin' harder and harder
and it kept gittin' darker and darker. And the old house was
just a-vibratin' like it was gonna blow away. And I started
tryin' to see my hand. And I kept bringin' my hand up closer
and closer and closer and closer and closer and I finally
touched the end of my nose and I still couldn't see my hand.
That's how black it was. And we burned kerosene lamps and
Dad lit an old kerosene lamp, set it on the kitchen table and
it was just across the room from me, about -- about 14 feet.
And I could just barely see that lamp flame across the room.
That's how dark it was and it was six o'clock in the
afternoon. It was the 14th of April, 1935. The sun was still
up, but it was totally black and that was blackest, worst dust
storm, sand storm we had durin' the whole time. A lot of
people died. A lot of children, especially, died of dust
pneumonia. They'd take little kids and cover 'em with sheets
and sprinkle water on the sheets to filter the dust out. But we
had to haul water. We had a team and we had water barrels.
We hauled stock water and household water both…
…And we didn't have the water to use for that, so we just
had to suffer through it. And lots of mornin's we'd get up
and strain our drinkin' water like people strain milk,
through a cloth, to strain the debris out of it. But then, of
course, a lotta grit went through and settled to the bottom of
the bucket, but you had have drinkin' water. And when you
got you a little dipper of water, you drink it. You didn't take
a sip and throw it away, because it was a very precious thing
to us because we had to haul it.
Surviving the Dust Bowl – Watch the entire PBS special online. (52:31)
Effects of the
Dust Bowl:
• Farmers could barely
make a living, causing
many to leave their
homes for the west.
Farm foreclosure sale.
(Circa 1933)
Farm foreclosure sale in Iowa. (Circa 1933)
• Many
farmers
became
migrant
farmers as
they moved
from region
to region
looking for
work.
Farm Security Administration: Families on the road with all
their possessions packed into their trucks, migrating and
looking for work. (Circa 1935)
Farm Security
Administration:
farmers whose
topsoil blew
away joined the
sod caravans of
"Okies" on
Route 66 to
California.
(Circa 1935)
Farm Security
Administration:
Migrant worker on
California highway.
(Circa 1935)
Toward Los
Angeles,
California.
1937. (Dorothea
Lange.)
Perhaps 2.5
million people
abandoned their
homes in the
South and the
Great Plains
during the
Great
Depression and
went on the
road.
Migrant family looking for work in the pea fields of
California. (Circa 1935)
• Migrant
farmers from
Arkansas
became known
as Arkies.
Farm Security
Administration:
Arkansas
squatter for
three years near
Bakefield,
California.
Photo by D.
Lange. (Circa
1935)
• Migrant
farmers from
Oklahoma
became
known as
Okies.
Young
Oklahoma
mother; age
18, penniless,
stranded in
Imperial
Valley,
California.
Objective: To
examine the effects of
the Great Depression.
Do Now:
• Write a reaction to the
photo “Migrant
Mother”, by Dorothea
Lange.
• For example, what
emotions does it elicit?
• Why? Explain your
thoughts specifically.
pea pickers camp,
Nipomo, CA (1936)
The photograph that
has become known as
"Migrant Mother" is
one of a series of
photographs that
Dorothea Lange made
of Florence Owens
Thompson and her
children in February or
March of 1936 in
Nipomo, California. In
1960, Lange gave this
account of the
experience:
“I saw and approached
the hungry and
desperate mother, as if
drawn by a magnet. I do
not remember how I
explained my presence
or my camera to her, but
I do remember she
asked me no
questions…I did not ask
her name or her history.
She told me her age,
that she was thirty-two.
She said that they had
been living on frozen
vegetables from the..
.. surrounding fields,
and birds that the
children killed.
She had just sold the
tires from her car to
buy food. There she sat
in that lean- to tent with
her children huddled
around her, and seemed
to know that my
pictures might help her,
and so she helped me.
There was a sort of
equality about it.”
(From: Popular
Photography, Feb. 1960).
Dorothea Lange's
"Migrant Mother,"
destitute in a pea picker's
camp, because of the
failure of the early pea
crop. These people had
just sold their tent in
order to buy food. Most of
the 2,500 people in this
camp were destitute. By
the end of the decade
there were still 4 million
migrants on the road.
Police stand guard outside the entrance to New York's closed
World Exchange Bank, March 20, 1931
Unemployed men vying for jobs at the American Legion
Employment Bureau in Los Angeles during the Great
Depression.
Unemployed workers in front of a shack with Christmas tree,
East 12th Street, New York City. December 1937
Hard Times
Unemployment
· By the early 1930’s,
approximately 25% of the
nation was unemployed.
Man in hobo jungle killing
turtle to make soup,
Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Sept. 1939.
Families
in Crisis
· Marriage
and birth
rates
dropped.
· Fathers
and some
children
left home
to find
work.
Evicted family with
belongings on street,
December 14, 1929.
Homelessness
· Homeless families built
shacks out of wooden
crates and scrap metal.
· These shacks were
known as Hoovervilles.
Seattle, Washington
Central Park,
New York City
“Hooverville,"
New York City,
December 8
1930
[Sign on shack
reads:
"House of
Unemployed"]
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? (1932)
They used to tell me I was
building a dream
And so I followed the mob.
When there was earth to plow
or guns to bear,
I was always there, right on
the job.
They used to tell me I was
building a dream
With peace and glory ahead -Why should I be standing in
line, just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad, I
made it run,
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad, now
it's done -Brother, can you spare a
dime?
Once I built a tower, up to
the sun,
brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower, now it's
done -Brother, can you spare a
dime?
Once in khaki suits, gee, we looked swell
Full of that Yankee Doodle-de-dum.
Half a million boots went slogging through hell,
And I was the kid with the drum.
Say, don't you remember they called me Al,
It was Al all the time.
Why don't you remember, I'm your pal -Say, buddy, can you spare a dime?
Hoover Takes Action
• At first,
President
Hoover was
against
offering
direct
government
relief.
• Instead, he
asked private
charities,
such as the
YMCA, to
help.
Christmas Day
Breadlines in New
York City, 1931
• Hoover eventually set up public works programs, where the
government hired people to construct schools, dams and
highways. Ex.) Hoover Dam
The Hoover Dam
• Hoover also approved the
Reconstruction Finance
Corporation (RFC), which
loaned money to railroads,
banks, and insurance
companies.
Des Moines Register, April
5, 1930
The Bonus Army
• World War I
veterans were due
to be paid a bonus
in 1945.
• In 1932, over
20,000 jobless
veterans protested
in Washington,
D.C. demanding
immediate
payment.
Handpainted sign on Bonus Army truck states: "We Done a
Good Job in France, Now You Do a Good Job in America"
Tanks and cavalry prepare to evacuate the Bonus Army (July
28, 1932)
The United States Army burned this and similar camps to the
ground after routing the many thousands of protestors that
were camped out in the national capital with tanks, tear gas,
and troops of armed soldiers. (July 28, 1932)
• In clashes with police, four veterans were killed.
• Hoover ordered General Douglas MacArthur to clear out the
veterans using cavalry, tanks, tear gas and machine guns.
* The brutal treatment of the Bonus Army lowered Hoover’s
popularity even further. The nation was poised for a new
leader to lead them out of the depression.
Concluding Video
(6:23)