The drought of 1930 resulted in a lot of suffering for the American immigrants. The southern plains were rich, fertile plains. The high demand for wheat during the First World War encouraged farmers to practice large-scale farming in the states of Kansas, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma.
As Henderson explains in the letters (2), it was during the summer of 1931 that the winds started to blow dust, making it very difficult to breathe. Everyone had to use face masks to protect their faces. The sand was blown everywhere with severe dust storms that increased in frequency from 15 to 30 per year by 1932(Henderson 2). From 1934 to 1935, all the crops died, leading to huge losses due to the ensuing drought. According to Arthi (200), Farmers depended on cornbread and beans only. The federal government stepped in to supply the farmers with relief checks, but some of the family heads felt that it was too humiliating. Fraser (1663) describes how the drought worsened. The animals started dying, and the government set up a program to kill the animals and paid the farmers a small compensation for the loss. It was in 1935 that the pneumonia epidemic started, which the locals called dust pneumonia. !/3 of all the deaths were caused by pneumonia in these states. Most of the farmers gave up and decided to leave, leading to the mass closure of schools and banks and the abandoning of churches (Gregg, 130).
One John McCarthy advocated for those who had been left not to leave. By 1936, the federal government had started to teach farmers how to practice soil conservation measures. By 1937, ploughing practices were being implemented using soil conservation techniques. In 1939, the dust storms had reduced by 65%, and the rains came during that year after a decade of drought.
Work Cited
Henderson, Caroline, A. Letters From the Dust Bowl, The Atlantic Daily (5) 1936 p,1-2, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1936/05/letters-from-the-dust-bowl/308897/ accessed on 10th April 2018
Arthi, Vellore. “The Dust Was Long in Settling’: Human Capital and the Lasting Impact of the American Dust Bowl.”The Journal of Economic History, Vol.78.no.1,2018,pp196-230.,doi:10.1017/S0022050718000074 accessed on 10th April 2018
Fraser, Evan DG. “Coping with food crises: Lessons from the American Dust Bowl on balancing local food, agro-technology, social welfare, and government regulation agendas in food and farming systems.” Global environmental change 23.6 (2013): 1662-1672. Retrieved from, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378013001507, accessed on 10th April 2018.
Gregg, Sara M. “From breadbasket to dust bowl: rural credit, the World War I plow-up, and the transformation of American agriculture.” Great Plains Quarterly 35.2 (2015): 129-166.Retrieved from, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/581877/summary, accessed on 10th April 2018.
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