2/19/2013
The Dust Bowl
Learning Goals
• Analyze the impact of physical and human
geographic factors during the Dust Bowl.
• Understand explain how specific needs result
in scientific discoveries and technological
innovations in agriculture.
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2/19/2013
The Dust Bowl
• During WWI, farmers of the Great Plains made a
lot of money growing wheat for the War
• The prairie grass was destroyed by the plows and
the intensive agriculture left the soil vulnerable to
the weather
• After the Great Depression, a drought began and
turned much of the plains into a dusty, dry
landscape
• Many farmers abandoned their farms and
became migrant workers, moving West
•
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2CiDaUYr90&feature=related
Most of the rich topsoil
was deposited in the
Atlantic Ocean.
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New Technology
• Mechanized agriculture worked the land too
much and at the wrong time
• Severe drought
“Tractored Out”
With farm prices low in both the 1920s and
1930s, small family farms found it difficult to
survive, even before the Dust Storms of the
1930s. Many of these small farmers were
“tractored out” by large corporate farms who
had the capital to operate on the scale
necessary to make profits.
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck
“You jus’ goin’ wes’?”
“Jus’ on our way.”
“You ain’t never been in California?”
“No, we ain’t.”
“Well, don’t take my word for it. Go see for yourself.”
“Yeah,” Tom said, “but a fella likes to know what he’s getting’ into.”
“…People gonna have a look in their eye. They gonna look at you an’ their faces says ‘I
don’t like you, you son-of-a-bitch.’ Gonna be deputy sheriffs, an’ they’ll push you
aroun’’… They hate you cause they’re scairt. They know a hungry fella gonna get food
even if he got to take it. They know that fallow lan’ a som am’ somebody’ gonna take it.
What the hell! You never been called ‘Okie’ yet.”
Tom said, “Okie? What’s that?”
“Well Okie use’ ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you’re a dirty son-of-abitch. Okie means you’re skum.”
Steinbeck’s book portrayed migrants sympathetically. It’s
outcome also implied that the frustration felt by many
unemployed migrants, if allowed to continue to build,
might eventually lead to class warfare.
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Dorothea Lange
Lange and other
photographers were
employed by the Farm
Security Administration to
document living conditions
among the migrant workers
who were forced to
abandon their farms in the
Dust Bowl. They helped
make Americans more
sympathetic to the plight of
“Okies” and other migrants.
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Migrant Workers
aboutrecessiondepression.com
Migrant Worker Camps
The Government
• Herbert Hoover was unable
to get the nation out of the
depression
• Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR)
was elected in 1932 and
promised to help Americans
symonsez.wordpress.com
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New Aid to
Farmers
• During the New Deal, a number
of programs provided aid to
farmers.
• The Agricultural Adjustment Act
(AAA) tried to help raise farm
prices by providing subsidies for
farmers who did not produce to
full capacity.
Farmers receive
government subsidies.
• The Resettlement Administration
and the Farm Security
Administration launched
programs designed to help poor
farmers in the Dust Bowl.
Check for Understanding
1.
2.
3.
4.
What human factors caused the Dust Bowl?
What natural factors caused the Dust Bowl?
How did the farmers deal with it?
What did the government do about it?
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