Mr. Cody Owen
U.S.
History II
11th Grade
The Great Depression:
Agriculture and the Dust bowl
Rationale: This
lesson is important for students to understand because it shaped the dynamics
of the west and agriculture today, form the migrations to California to the government programs that
shape agriculture today.
Objectives: Students
will look at the effects dust bowl during the great depression., have the
students see the events through the depression and debate weather the programs
instituted to minimize the effects of the dustbowl worked or not.
Fore-Knowledge: Students
should now that the dust bowl was an important contributor to the great
depression.
Materials Needed:
Wind Tunnel (Box fan, cardboard boxes toy cabin, car etc. sand, and damp rag). Each student should have their own
journals.
Bell
Ringer:
As students walk in have clips
of the dust boul on the screan, from the PBS American Esperance,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/dustbowl/
. Building a Model, Have a build a wind tunnel with a box fan, a cardboard box
and then a
cardboard box with a window.
Ave a cabin made of Lincoln
logs and a toy truck etc. Put sand in the box, and then put a moist rag on top
of the sand.
Run the fan
with the moist towel on the sad to represent the topsoil and grass, then after explaining
how farmers in the mid west over tilled the soil and lost the top soil then
take off the towel and then turn on the fan again… have the students watched
and note the difference in their when the “wind blue” and have them write it in
their journals.
For eight years dust blew on the southern plains. It came in a
yellowish-brown haze from the South and in rolling walls of black from the
North. The simplest acts of life — breathing, eating a meal, taking a walk —
were no longer simple. Children wore dust masks to and from school, women hung
wet sheets over windows in a futile attempt to stop the dirt, farmers watched
helplessly as their crops blew away. [
source]
The Dust Bowl of the 1930s lasted about a decade. Its primary area of impact
was on the southern Plains. The northern Plains were not so badly effected, but
nonetheless, the drought, windblown dust and agricultural decline were no
strangers to the north. In fact the agricultural devastation helped to lengthen
the Depression whose effects were felt worldwide. The movement of people on the
Plains was also profound.
As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel
The Grapes of Wrath:
"And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas,
Oklahoma, Texas,
New Mexico; from Nevada
and Arkansas,
families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and
hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two
hundred thousand. 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 of all
for land."
Poor agricultural practices and years of sustained drought caused the Dust
Bowl. Plains grasslands had been deeply plowed and planted to wheat. During the
years when there was adequate rainfall, the land produced bountiful crops. But
as the droughts of the early 1930s deepened, the farmers kept plowing and
planting and nothing would grow. The ground cover that held the soil in place
was gone. The Plains winds whipped across the fields raising billowing clouds
of dust to the skys. The skys could darken for days, and even the most well
sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on furniture. In some places the
dust would drift like snow, covering farmsteads.
Timeline
of The Dust Bowl
1931
Severe drought hits the Midwestern and Southern plains. As the crops die,
the 'black blizzards" begin. Dust from the over-plowed and over-grazed
land begins to blow.
1932
The number of dust storms is increasing. Fourteen are reported this year;
next year there will be 38.
1933
March: When Franklin Roosevelt takes
office, the country is in desperate straits. He took quick steps to declare a
four-day bank holiday, during which time Congress came up with the Emergency
Banking Act of 1933, which stabilized the banking industry and restored
people's faith in the banking system by putting the federal government behind
it.
May: The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act
allots $200 million for refinancing mortgages to help farmers facing
foreclosure. The Farm Credit Act of 1933 established a local bank and set up
local credit associations.
September: Over 6 million young pigs
are slaughtered to stabilize prices With most of the meat going to waste,
public outcry led to the creation, in October, of the Federal Surplus Relief
Corporation. The FSRC diverted agricultural commodities to relief
organizations. Apples, beans, canned beef, flour and pork products were
distributed through local relief channels. Cotton goods were eventually
included to clothe the needy as well.
October: In California's
San Joaquin Valley,
where many farmers fleeing the plains have gone, seeking migrant farm work, the
largest agricultural strike in America's
history begins. More than 18,000 cotton workers with the Cannery and
Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) went on strike for 24 days.
During the strike, two men and one woman were killed and hundreds injured. In
the settlement, the union was recognized by growers, and workers were given a
25 percent raise.
1934
May: Great dust storms spread from the
Dust Bowl area. The drought is the worst ever in U.S. history, covering more than 75
percent of the country and affecting 27 states severely.
June: The Frazier-Lemke Farm
Bankruptcy Act is approved. This act restricted the ability of banks to
dispossess farmers in times of distress. Originally effective until 1938, the
act was renewed four times until 1947, when it expired. Roosevelt
signs the Taylor Grazing Act, which allows him to take up to 140 million acres
of federally-owned land out of the public domain and establish grazing
districts that will be carefully monitored. One of many New Deal efforts to
reverse the damage done to the land by overuse, the program was able to arrest
the deterioration, but couldn't undo the historical damage.
December: The "Yearbook of
Agriculture" for 1934 announces, "Approximately 35 million acres of
formerly cultivated land have essentially been destroyed for crop production. .
. . 100 million acres now in crops have lost all or most of the topsoil; 125
million acres of land now in crops are rapidly losing topsoil. . . "
1935
January 15: The federal government
forms a Drought Relief Service to coordinate relief activities. The DRS bought
cattle in counties that were designated emergency areas, for $14 to $20 a head.
Those unfit for human consumption - more than 50 percent at the beginning of
the program - were destroyed. The remaining cattle were given to the Federal
Surplus Relief Corporation to be used in food distribution to families
nationwide. Although it was difficult for farmers to give up their herds, the
cattle slaughter program helped many of them avoid bankruptcy. "The government
cattle buying program was a God-send to many farmers, as they could not afford
to keep their cattle, and the government paid a better price than they could
obtain in local markets."
April 8: FDR approves the Emergency
Relief Appropriation Act, which provides $525 million for drought relief, and
authorizes creation of the Works Progress Administration, which would employ
8.5 million people.
April 14: Black Sunday. The worst
"black blizzard" of the Dust Bowl occurs, causing extensive damage.
April 27: Congress declares soil
erosion "a national menace" in an act establishing the Soil
Conservation Service in the Department of Agriculture (formerly the Soil
Erosion Service in the U.S. Department of Interior). Under the direction of
Hugh H. Bennett, the SCS developed extensive conservation programs that
retained topsoil and prevented irreparable damage to the land. Farming
techniques such as strip cropping, terracing, crop rotation, contour plowing,
and cover crops were advocated. Farmers were paid to practice soil-conserving
farming techniques.
December: At a meeting in Pueblo, Colorado,
experts estimate that 850,000,000 tons of topsoil has blown off the Southern
Plains during the course of the year, and that if the drought continued, the
total area affected would increase from 4,350,000 acres to 5,350,000 acres in
the spring of 1936. C.H. Wilson
of the Resettlement Administration proposes buying up 2,250,000 acres and
retiring it from cultivation.
1936
February: Los Angeles Police Chief
James E. Davis sends 125 policemen to patrol the borders of Arizona
and Oregon to
keep "undesirables" out. As a result, the American Civil Liberties
Union sues the city.
May: The SCS publishes a soil
conservation district law, which, if passed by the states, allows farmers to
set up their own districts to enforce soil conservation practices for five-year
periods. One of the few grassroots organizations set up by the New Deal still
in operation, the soil conservation district program recognized that new
farming methods needed to be accepted and enforced by the farmers on the land
rather than bureaucrats in Washington.
1937
March: Roosevelt
addresses the nation in his second inaugural address, stating, "I see
one-third of the nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished . . . the test of
our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have
much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."
FDR's Shelterbelt Project begins. The project called for large-scale
planting of trees across the Great Plains, stretching in a 100-mile wide zone
from Canada to northern Texas, to protect the
land from erosion. Native trees, such as red cedar and green ash, were planted
along fence rows separating properties, and farmers were paid to plant and
cultivate them. The project was estimated to cost 75 million dollars over a
period of 12 years. When disputes arose over funding sources (the project was
considered to be a long-term strategy, and therefore ineligible for emergency
relief funds), FDR transferred the program to the WPA, where the project had
limited success.
1938
The extensive work re-plowing the land into furrows, planting trees in
shelterbelts, and other conservation methods has resulted in a 65 percent
reduction in the amount of soil blowing. However, the drought continued.
1939
In the fall, the rain comes, finally bringing an end to the drought. During
the next few years, with the coming of World War II, the country is pulled out
of the Depression and the plains once again become golden with wheat.
Timeline Source
Assessment: Have the students
write their opinions on the dust bowl and have them turn it in with their
journal. As a teacher I will be looking for thoughts on the dissection of the
dust storms, and or the displacement of hundreds of Midwest
farmers.
References:
People attend the REDC Foreclosure Home
Auction in New York,
in this photo taken March 8, 2009. About 1,400 people crowded into New York's first
foreclosure auction over the weekend. One family bought a 2,062-square foot
home in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York for just $12, 500 or $6 per square
foot, according to the New York Post. (REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton) 
Job seekers join a line of hundreds at a
job fair in Heredia, Costa Rica on March 6, 2009. The
job fair attracted hundreds of unemployed Costa Ricans looking for work across
the country. (REUTERS/Juan Carlos Ulate)
