Bonnifield, Matthew Paul. The Dust Bowl: Men Dirt and Depression. University of New Mexico Press, 1979.
A journalist named Robert Geiger first coined the term Dust Bowl in the 1930s, which was a decade of extreme droughts, blizzards, tornadoes, dust storms and other climatic changes. Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Kansas and other Plains states bore the brunt of this drought, and Dr. Bonnifield lived through it at the time. This region of the country was highly arid and semi-desert even at the best of times, and had undergone a big speculative boom in wheat farming during World War I and the 1920s. When the drought began in 1930, coinciding with the Great Depression, these events caught the Plains farmers completely unaware and unprepared. Many went bankrupt and abandoned their farms, turning into migrant workers and economic refugees on the West Coast. Huge dust storms that continued until 1938 combined…...
Although the 1930s as a whole for all farmers were marked by dramatic periods of "boom and bust," for the residents of the Triangle, the periods of "boom" were far shorter and crueler (McNeill 40). Indeed, when "Captain John Palliser first reached the prairies he was said he thought he had "discovered Hell" because the region was so arid and desert-like. Still, Palliser noted "a fertile belt surrounding the region" (Bonikowsky 2007). Like the Great Plains, Indians and buffalo were the main residents (McNeill 41). The British government ignored Palliser's dim prognosis about developing the area and encouraged settlement.
Farmers in the Triangle repeatedly watched entire seasons of crops blow away in the dust, despite their efforts to engage in vigorous, proactive farming techniques like "fallowing (plowing but not sowing a field)," crop rotation (which was not practiced in the American est) and "shallow cultivation to preserve soil moisture, unfortunately…...
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Works Cited
Bonikowsky, Laura Neilson. "Drought in Palliser's Triangle. The Canadian
They are used for the same reasons farmers depleted the soils in Oklahoma in the 1930s, which was to produce a surplus of crops in the hopes of making bigger profits.
Many of those consequences are long-term and might not be noticeable for at least one generation into the future. I think the Dust Bowl situation is interesting because the consequences of poor farming practices did take many decades to manifest. If the Dust Bowl teaches us anything it is that we need to think more in terms of long-term results rather than short-term gains.
Finally, I appreciated learning how the Dust Bowl phenomenon can be applied to other human-caused environmental problems. Any time human beings override common sense in the pursuit of profit, disaster can occur. Whether planting corn and soybeans instead of diverse crops or whether overproducing livestock to fuel the fast food industry, many environmental problems are caused…...
S. history. He has held teaching appointments at Brandeis University, the University of Hawaii, and the University of Maine. He serves on the boards of several environmental organizations. His publications include An Unsettled Country: Changing Landscapes of the American est (1994); The ealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (1993); Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (1977); and A River Running est: The Life of John esley Powell (2001). He is currently working on a biography of John Muir, to be published by Oxford University Press (Harvard Divinity School, 2006, found online at http://www.hds.harvard.edu/cswr/resources/eve/worster.html)."
orster's credentials reveal him to be well educated in the subject matter that he covers in his book, Dust Bowl. He is a man whose interest in environmental history, especially it focuses on those areas of the country where orster's own life experiences have been shaped, and would familiarize him with the geography and…...
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Works Cited
Carr, Edward Hallett. What is History?, Random House, New York, New York, 1961.
Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl, Oxford Press, Oxford: New York, 2004.
Worst completed the book, A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir, and it was published in 2008.
oming of Great DepressionThe Great Depression itself perhaps could not have been seen comingbut the crash that preceded certainly could have been seen coming, as there were several warning signs beneath the surface of the good times and Roaring Twenties. First off, the economic boom of the 1920s post-war period was partly driven by excessive borrowing and speculation. Interest rates were low and credit was easy to come by. Easy credit tends to lead to over-leveraged accounts. Many people and businesses were invested heavily in the stock market using margin loans, which helped to blow a bubble that was simply not sustainable without an influx of new money. This was all worsened by agricultural overproduction, which led to falling crop prices that put farmers into a bind, especially if they were already in debt. Income inequality was also a problem, with wealth concentrated in just a small percentage of people…...
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Coming of Great Depression The Great Depression itself perhaps could not have been seen coming—but the crash that preceded certainly could have been seen coming, as there were several warning signs beneath the surface of the good times and “Roaring Twenties.” First off, the economic boom of the 1920s post-war period was partly driven by excessive borrowing and speculation. Interest rates were low and credit was easy to come by. Easy credit tends to lead to over-leveraged accounts. Many people and businesses were invested heavily in the stock market using margin loans, which helped to blow a bubble that was simply not sustainable without an influx of new money. This was all worsened by agricultural overproduction, which led to falling crop prices that put farmers into a bind, especially if they were already in debt. Income inequality was also a problem, with wealth concentrated in just a small percentage of people in the US, while many other Americans lived in poverty. The set-up was essentially one just waiting to be knocked down by the first strong wind. Some critics warned of a possible market crash due to overvaluation and speculative excesses. However, these criticisms tended to be dismissed as overly pessimistic by people who believed the good times could last forever. But as soon as credit began to tighten and smart money began selling, the stock market crash of 1929 commenced, and this opened the door for an economic downturn. The Dust Bowl did not help matters at a time when the combustion engine was moving workers out of the fields already. Lack of employment was a big problem following the Crash. However, the depression also opened the door for a new round of socialist policies to be put into place, which did little to inspire enthusiasm in markets and only made the bounce-back that much slower. Meanwhile, investment was pouring into Germany, whose policies appeared bold by comparison to those in the US.
Journal Reflections on a Dust Bowl Tale
Out of the Dust -- the Depression in Adolescent Poetry
It is difficult to think of this work as too dark for young individuals, even middle school children, because of its emotional truth and absence of sensationalism. It is written in the poetic voice of an articulate young women about concerns many young people face in real life, namely that of death of a loved one, guilt, and also coping with physical accidents. Moreover, the death of Billie Joe's mother is not gratuitous, or merely a death for sensationalism's sake. The book shows the effects death of a young person's main maternal figure upon a family and a great historical economic crisis, that of the looming Great Depression in the Dust Bowl of Midwestern America. The historical context of the novel gives an added importance and weight to the mother's death and the family's suffering,…...
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Work Cited
Hesse, Karen. Out of the Dust. New York: Scholastic 1997.
Environmental Themes in Grapes of rath
This essay reviews environmental themes from the following five books: Dust Bowl by Donald orster, The Grapes of rath by John Steinbeck, Everglades: River of Grass by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Killing Mr. atson by Peter Matthiessen, and River of Lakes by Bill Belleville. This paper discusses the role that culture has played in environmental issues during the past century. Five sources used. MLA format.
Environmental Themes
Humans from the very beginning of their existence have had an impact, for better or worse, on the environment. Man has for the most part tried to control the environment to suit his needs or tastes of the era. Over-grazing, over hunting, ignoring the importance crop rotations, dam building, and toxic dumping, are but a few of the ways man tries to control. Few societies have ever considered any of the above when it comes to the environment. There are a…...
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Works Cited
Belleville, Bill. River of Lakes. University of Georgia
Press. 2001.
Douglas, Marjory Stoneman. The Everglades River of Grass.
On the other hand, in the Dust Bowl evidence, photos and statistics play a very important role, because they paint a graphic picture of what was going on in the country and how people were suffering. This type of evidence plays a much more important role than in the Sacco and Vanzetti case, which was not so much about photographs and statistics, but about print documents and even the political climate. This indicates how different cases require different perspectives and the use of differing evidence.
The difference in these two historic cases also points to the use of differing evidence to study different moments in history. The Dust Bowl affected millions of people who lost their farms, left the area, and moved to places like California to find work and start new lives. There were books written about it, news stories, and everything in between. The Sacco and Vanzetti case initially…...
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References
Davidson, James West and Lytle, Mark Hamilton. After the Fact: The Art of Historical Detection. Volume 2, Fifth Edition. New York: McGraw Hill Higher Education, 2004.
Bonnie and Clyde
hat accounts for the persistence of the legend of Bonnie and Clyde? For two not particularly distinguished criminals from a bygone era in American history, the staying power in the collective consciousness of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker is nothing short of remarkable. In part, the media has played a substantial role, with the epochal 1967 Arthur Penn film having been succeeded in 2013 by a television miniseries about the duo and their gang. I hope to demonstrate through an examination of the historical source material that the reason for Bonnie and Clyde's persistence is explainable in one single word: economics. hat Bonnie and Clyde signify for later generations of interested readers is a response (howsoever criminal) on the part of ordinary people to the Great Depression that defined America during the Presidency of Herbert Hoover. Although certain other aspects of their short career -- particularly their reliance…...
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Works Cited
Barrow, Blanche Caldwell. My Life with Bonnie and Clyde. Ed. John Neal Phillips. Oklahoma City: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. Print.
Guinn, Jeff. Go Down Together: The True Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010. Print.
Phillips, John Neal. Running with Bonnie and Clyde: The Ten Fast Years of Ralph Fults. Oklahoma City: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. Print.
Schneider, Paul. Bonnie and Clyde: The Lives Behind The Legend. New York: Henry Holt, 2009. Print.
The land was already suffering from the eradication of grass because of cattle-farming, the natural balance of the ecosystem had been destroyed as a result of the tyranny and greed of man, and now the land, starving, ate the farmers alive. Dust pneumonia killed men and women living on soil that only a few years ago had yielded wild profits during the wheat boom, when the rest of the world had suffered a wheat shortage.
There is something poignantly human about the attitude towards money and profit in the farmers that everyone can relate to -- how can something that once was so profitable suddenly evaporate, after all? How could the climate change so quickly -- it seemed impossible? Also, vibrant settlements had been built up around the area, after all. These were not small, isolated farming towns in many cases, but true communities that had been enriched by the…...
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Works Cited
Egan, Timothy. The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great
However, it was changes in technology that originally made the cultivation of the land possible, and marked a shift from earlier methods of production, as practiced by Native Americans. hile small Okie farmers might have hated the larger agricultural conglomerates, they too had benefited from technology in past and paid the price when technology destroyed the land. And it was, in the end, technology that also saved such subsistence farmers, in the form of new cultivation methods -- introduced by the federal government.
orks Cited
Cooper, Michael. Dust to Eat. Clarion, 2004.
Davidson, J.R. "Interview." itness. The Dustbowl. PBS. May 1, 2010.
Oklahomans
Oklahoma has only been a state in the U.S. since 1907, yet Oklahomans were around well before then. Oklahoma is known as the “sooner” state because settlers had arrived in the territory before it had even been declared part of the United States. In the first half of the 19th century, the region was part of Arkansas Territory. The Native Americans were forced on the Trail of Tears and made to settle in Indian Territory in modern-day Oklahoma. In the latter half of the 19th century, cattle ranchers from Texas drove their cattle through Indian Territory to states up north and out west, paving cattle trails along the way. More and more whites began to settle in the area as a result of these cattle trails and the expansion of the railroad. Then when oil was found, Oklahoma became a major focus for the oil industry and Tulsa became known…...
The effect of all of this is to drive away those who actually worked the land because they loved it, replacing them with hired hands running machinery, neither of which is likely to be kind to the land.
Monopoly
Perhaps the most familiar form of business except for perfect competition, monopoly situations result when there are many potential buyers for a product or service, but only one seller.
In the Grapes of rath, a monopoly situation is created as the banks decide to remove tenant farmers, preferring to sell the land to a single large conglomerate of landowners or even a single corporation.
Steinbeck could hardly have painted a harsher picture of this monopoly-in-progress, with scenes of huge bulldozers razing all evidence of the tenant farmers from the land. However, he also notes that the 'monopolization' of the Great Plains was seemingly an event bigger even than those landowners who stood to gain.…...
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Works Cited
Cassuto, David. "Turning Wine into Water: Water as Privileged Signifier in 'The Grapes of Wrath'.." Papers on Language & Literature 29.1 (1993): 67+. Questia. 19 July 2005 http://www.questia.com/ .
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Viking Penguin, 1939.
Soviet Union brought the missiles into Cuba to rile up the American military establishment precisely so that U.S. nuclear missile installations in Turkey and Italy could be brought on the table. Secondly as an ally, Soviet Union was concerned about the fate of Cuba which held a lot of promise for the Communist experiment internationally.
The American leadership understood that what they faced in Cuba was a catch 22 situation. If they failed to act, they would live under threat and shadow of nuclear war. If they carried out a full fledge invasion of Cuba, the Soviet Union would respond by taking over West Berlin thereby severely denting the credibility of the United States of America in the eyes of its European allies. Able master of political chess that Khrushchev was he played the inexperienced but charismatic President Kennedy like a fiddle. There were of course some in the military…...
The Leblanc alkali production processes were especially pernicious, but they followed along the lines of previous industrial processes. In other words, the first British environmental legislation was a response not so much to a qualitative change in industrial processes and their environmental impact but more to a quantitative increase in sources of pollution that had up to that point been (if only barely) tolerable.
Legislation Arising From Public Anger
At the center of the first British environmental legislation was the Leblanc process, an industrial process that produced of soda ash (which is chemically sodium carbonate) that came into use in the first decades of the 19th century. Named after its inventor, Nicolas Leblanc, it replaced an older process in which soda ash had been produced from wood ash. However, as the availability of wood ash declined (because of deforestation, a process that was occuring both in Great Britain and across Europe…...
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Resources Act (WRA) of 1991. This act "establishes the duties of the Environment Agency (EA) on flood defence and other areas relating to water management and quality."
"The EA has discretionary powers to improve and maintain river conditions. This means that the EA is not obliged to construct or maintain such works. In practice, the EA will only proceed with schemes that are not only beneficial but cost-effective.
"The Act also grants the EA powers to issue flood warnings and regulate what can be discharged into rivers, estuaries, coastal waters, lakes and groundwaters."
Canadian law on flooding is similarly divided between common law and statutory law.
Alluring and Impactful Titles for "The Dust Bowl: A Global Perspective"
Descriptive and Emotive
Dust to Dust: The Devastation of the Global Dust Bowl Whispers of the Wind: The Silent Agony of the Dust Bowl Choking on Dust: The Environmental Catastrophe That Stunned the World
Historical and Geographic
The Global Dust Bowl: A Transcontinental Catastrophe The Dust Bowl: A Worldwide Crisis in the 1930s From the Prairies to the Pampas: The Global Reach of the Dust Bowl
Metaphorical and Poetic
Symphony of Destruction: The Dust Bowl's Toxic Legacy Dance of the Dust Devils: Witnessing a Global Calamity Ashes in the Wind: The Lingering....
1. The causes and consequences of the Dust Bowl 2. The role of government intervention in response to the Dust Bowl 3. The impact of the Dust Bowl on agriculture and the economy 4. The social and cultural effects of the Dust Bowl on communities 5. Environmental consequences of the Dust Bowl and its long-term effects 6. The Dust Bowl in literature and art 7. The Dust Bowl migration and its impact on society 8. The role of technology in mitigating the effects of future dust storms 9. Lessons learned from the Dust Bowl for sustainable agriculture and land management 10. The Dust Bowl as a cautionary tale for....
The Devastating Effects of Dust Storms on Plant and Animal Life Soil Erosion and the Loss of Agricultural Productivity The Long-Term Ecological Legacy of the Dust Bowl
Economic Impacts of the Dust Bowl
The Collapse of the Agricultural Economy in the Great Plains The Migration of Farm Workers and the Rise of Migrant Labor Camps The Government Response to the Economic Crisis and its Lasting Impact
Social and Cultural Impacts of the Dust Bowl
The Psychological and Emotional Toll of Living Through the Dust Storms The Rise of Dust Bowl Literature and Art The Cultural Legacy....
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