The plan has been proposed and carried through here as a matter of public policy for the welfare of all without reproach or humiliation to anyone. It should be remembered that is the fourth successive year of drouth and crop failure through a great part of the high plains region, and the hopelessly low prices for the crop of gave no chance to build up reserves for future needs.
If the severe critics of all who in any way join in government plans for the saving of homes and the restoration of farms to a productive basis could only understand how vital a human problem is here considered, possibly their censures might be less bitter and scornful.
At any rate the contour listing has been done over extensive areas. If rains come to carry forward the feed crops now just struggling up in the furrows, the value of the work can be appraised. The primary intention of the plan for contour listing is to distribute rainfall evenly over the fields and prevent its running off to one end of the field or down the road to some creek or drainage basin. It is hoped that the plan will indirectly tend to lessen wind erosion by promoting the growth of feed crops, restoration of humus to denuded surfaces, and some protection through standing stubbles and the natural coverage of weeds and unavoidable wastes.
One great contributing cause of the terrible dust storms of the last two years has been the pitiful bareness of the fields resulting from the long drouth. I am not wise enough to forecast the result. We have had two most welcome rains in June—three quarters of an inch and one-half inch. Normally these should have been of the utmost benefit, though they by no means guarantee an abundant feed crop from our now sprouting seeds as many editorial writers have decreed, and they do nothing toward restoring subsoil moisture.
Actually the helpful effects of the rains have been for us and for other people largely destroyed by the drifting soil from abandoned, unworked lands around us. It fills the air and our eyes and noses and throats, and, worst of all, our furrows, where tender shoots are coming to the surface only to be buried by the smothering silt from the fields of rugged individualists who persist in their right to do nothing.
A fairly promising piece of barley has been destroyed for us by the merciless drift from the same field whose sands have practically buried the little mulberry hedge which has long sheltered our buildings from the north west winds.
Large spaces in our pastures are entirely bare in spite of the rains. Most of the green color, where there is any grazing, is due to the pestilent Russian thistles rather than to grass. Our little locust grove which we cherished for so many years has become a small pile of fence posts. With trees and vines and flowers all around you, you can't imagine how I miss that little green shaded spot in the midst of the desert glare. Naturally you will wonder why we stay where conditions are so extremely disheartening.
Why not pick up and leave as so many others have done? It is a fair question, but a hard one to answer. Recently I talked with a young university graduate of very superior attainments. He took the ground that in such a ease sentiment could and should be disregarded. He may be right. Yet I cannot act or feel or think as if the experiences of our twenty-seven years of life together had never been.
And they are all bound up with the little corner to which we have given our continued and united efforts. To leave voluntarily to break all these closely knit ties for the sake of a possibly greater comfort elsewhere—seems like defaulting on our task. We may have to leave. We can't hold out indefinitely without some return from the land, some source of income, however small.
But I think I can never go willingly or without pain that as yet seems unendurable. There are also practical considerations that serve to hold us here, for the present. Our soil is excellent. We need only a little rain—less than in most places—to make it productive.
No one who remembers the wheat crops of , , , can possibly regard this as permanently submarginal land. The newer methods of farming suggest possibilities of better control of moisture in the future. Our entire equipment is adapted to the type of farming suitable for this country and would have to be replaced at great expense with the tools needed in some other locality.
We have spent so much in trying to keep our land from blowing away that it looks foolish to walk off and leave it, when somewhat more favorable conditions seem now to 'cast their shadows before.
It is just a place to stand on—if we can keep the taxes paid—and work and hope for a better day. We could realize nothing whatever from all our years of struggle with which to make a fresh start.
We long for the garden and little chickens, the trees and birds and wild flowers of the years gone by. Perhaps if we do our part these good things may return some day, for others if not for ourselves. Will joins me in earnest hopes for your recovery. The dust has been particularly aggravating to his bronchial trouble, but he keeps working on.
A great reddish-brown dust cloud is rising now from the southeast, so we must get out and do our night work before it arrives. Our thoughts go with you. On this blistering Sunday afternoon, I am, like Alexander Selkirk,.
There is no one within a mile and a half, and all day I've seen just one person pass by in an old stripped-down Ford. Will and Eleanor went early this morning with a family of neighbors to visit the dinosaur pit in the next county to the westward—about seventy miles from here where the State University is engaged in excavating the bones of some of these ancient monsters, reminders of a time when there was plenty of water even in the Panhandle.
It seemed impossible for us all to leave home at once, so I stayed here to care for a new Shorthorn brother, to keep the chickens' pails filled with fresh water, to turn the cattle and horses in to water at noon, and to keep them from straying to the extremely poisonous drouth-stricken cane. We spent the better part of a night during the week trying to save two of the best young cows from the effects of the prussic acid which develops in the stunted sorghum.
We thought they would die and I am not sure yet whether they recovered because of the liberal doses of melted lard and molasses or whether the poison was not quite strong enough to be fatal. It produces a paralysis of the respiratory system, and when death occurs, as it frequently does, it is due to suffocation from lack of oxygen. Ever since your letter came, I have been thinking how different are the causes of our personal difficulties.
It is hard for us prodigals in this far country, in our scarcity of all things, not to feel envious of the Del Mar Va pigs luxuriating in potatoes, peaches and cream? But, as I started to say, our own problems are of a quite different sort. We cannot complain of laziness on the part of our citizens. Oklahoma is one of the first states to get away from direct relief. Official reports of the administrators here emphasize the eagerness with which people accept any sort of work to help themselves and to make unnecessary the acceptance of public aid.
In our county the FERA force is being cut down. Three case workers and two from the office force have been dismissed during the past week. This progress toward more nearly normal conditions of employment occurs in the face of the most critical farm situation that we have ever encountered. For over a month we have had no rain, and the two light local showers early in July had only a slight and temporary effect.
All hope of an adequate forage crop has now followed into oblivion the earlier hopes of wheat and maize production. We have no native or cultivated hay crops. The cattle stay alive thus far on weeds, but the pastures are destitute of grass. Many think it can never be restored. The heat is intense and the drying winds are practically continuous, with a real 'duster' occurring every few days to keep us humble.
After the government erosion control project was carried through there was, for a time, a partial cessation of the dust blowing. But as the freshly upturned earth is pulverizing under the influence of continued heat and wind and entire lack of moisture, it too is ready to blow.
A recently established Oklahoma law permits the County Commissioners to require the working of kind that is being allowed to blow to the detriment of other farms, and I note that one such order has recently been issued in our county.
You asked about the soil erosion control programme and what could be done with an allowance of ten cents per acre. That amount just about covers actual expense of fuel and oil for listing with a large tractor. Possibly it leaves a slight margin if listing is done with a lighter outfit. In no case was any allowance made for a man's labor or the use of his farming equipment.
The plan was proposed to encourage widespread and practically simultaneous working of the blowing fields, with a reasonable proportion on contour lines, Undoubtedly it has been of great benefit, and had rains followed, as everyone hoped, we should feel that we were approaching the turn in the long road.
As a matter of fact, the complete absence of rain has given us no chance to test the effectiveness of the contour listing. A few people signed up for terracing as a more permanent method of conserving and distributing the longed for moisture—if it ever comes! Will has been working early and late with one of the county terracing machines, laying up ridges on contour lines for every foot of fall. He hopes to be ready to-morrow to turn the machine over to a neighbor who will also make the experiment.
Later on he would like to run the terrace lines across the pasture lands, but the future for us is most uncertain. Everything now depends on whether a definite change of moisture conditions occurs in time for people to sow wheat for The 'suitcase farmers' that is, insurance agents, preachers, real-estate men, and so forth, from cities near or far—have bet thousands of dollars upon rain, or, in other words, have hired the preparation of large areas of land all around us which no longer represent the idea of homes at all, but just parts of a potential factory for the low-cost production of wheat if it rains.
A short time ago a big tractor, working for one of these absentee farmers across the road from our home, accidentally hooked on to the cornerstone of the original survey and dragged it off up the road. All these many years that stone has marked the corner of our homestead. I have walked past it hundreds of times as I have taken the cows to their pasture or brought them home again. Always it has suggested the beauty of the untouched prairie as it was when the surveyors set the stone, the luxuriant thick turf of native grasses, — grama grass, buffalo, and curly mesquite, the pincushion cactuses, straw-color and rose, the other wild flowers which in their season fulfilled the thought of Shakespeare: —.
The cornerstone has also suggested the preparation for human occupation—the little homes that were so hopefully established here, of which so very few remain. After twenty-nine years, eight places in our township, out of the possible excluding the two school sections , are still occupied by those who made the original homestead entry.
And now the stone is gone and the manner of its removal seemed almost symbolic of the changes that appear inevitable. We can't see why your wheat prices should be so hopelessly low. You may judge now a little of how we felt in , with wheat at less than 'two bits' per bushel! The price here has recently been about a dollar a bushel, several cents above the Kansas City price. I suppose the idea is to discourage shipment, as there is not enough wheat in this area now to provide for fall sowing—if it rains—and seed wheat must be shipped in.
One morning at the store, being in a reckless mood, I invested a dime in five small tomatoes and wished you might be getting something like that price for your surplus. Potatoes cost us around thirty cents a peck. I hope the protest of the Maryland growers has been successful in giving them some return for their work. Peaches are priced at four pounds for a quarter, but are not for us.
So count your mercies, lady. It may surprise you to see how numerous they are. We feel rather proud that the proprietor of the Elkhart flour mill which we have patronized for many years has withdrawn from the group of Kansas millers suing the government for recovery of the processing tax. He explained his position by stating that, as the benefits derived from these taxes had been an actual lifesaver for farming and general business interests in this section, he would not seek to embarrass the government in its attempt to collect the tax.
His independent action in refusing to join in the raid seems worth mentioning in these days when individualism is supposed to be dead. It's time to do the evening work, put the guinea pig to bed, and begin to watch for the return of our explorers.
I do hope weather conditions are favoring the growth of your crops. As I have said before, our own problems seem of slight moment as pared with yours. I got over it. Ah, all I had really was a bronchial pneumonia.
Tell us what you got for Christmas. About a month later, why, we got a government check for about dollars. Boy, we were rich. We had Christmas. But I did remember that incident at the school. Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America.
Her work helped lay the foundation for modern codebreaking today. I n the summer of , hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies. By the time it was all over, more than three million acres had burned and at least 78 firefighters were dead. It was the largest fire in American history. The Dust Bowl prompted the largest migration in American history; by , 2. April 14, , dawned clear across the plains.
Then a huge black cloud appeared on the horizon, approaching fast. Support Provided by: Learn More. Now Streaming The Codebreaker Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America. The magnitude of the droughts of the s, combined with the Great Depression, led to unprecedented government relief efforts.
House of Representatives, ; the total cost social, economic, and environmental would be impossible to determine. If the Roosevelt era marked the beginning of large-scale aid, it also ushered in some of the first long-term, proactive programs to reduce future vulnerability to drought. Through their efforts, the first soil conservation districts came into being, and demonstration projects were carried out to show the benefits of practices such as terracing and contouring for a discussion of the activities of the SCS during this period, see Hurt, Many other proactive measures taken after the s drought also reduced rural and urban vulnerability to drought, including new or enlarged reservoirs, improved domestic water systems, changes in farm policies, new insurance and aid programs, and removal of some of the most sensitive agricultural lands from production Riebsame et al.
Problems remained, but these programs and activities would play a fundamental role in reducing the vulnerability of the nation to the forthcoming s drought. Although a larger area was affected during the s drought, the conservation techniques that many farmers implemented in the intervening years helped prevent conditions from reaching the severity of the s drought.
Fite, G. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. Hurt, D. Nelson Hall, Chicago. Link, I. Woofter, Jr. Works Progress Administration, Washington, D. Riebsame, W. Changnon, Jr. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado. United States House of Representatives.
Relief of the drought area. Warrick, R. Ausubel and A. Biswas eds. Climatic Constraints and Human Activities , pp. Pergamon Press, New York. Trainer; E. Baker; and W. White, R. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. More Contact Info Web Policy. Drought Center creates tool that could help detect emerging impacts by tracking news. Drought Monitor now searchable by tribal area. The Dust Bowl. Contributing Factors Due to low crop prices and high machinery costs, more submarginal lands were put into production.
The Great Depression Several factors including a market crash started a period of economic downturn known as the Great Depression. Dust Bowl Begins The middle of the nation is in the midst of the first of four major drought episodes that would occur over the course of the next decade. Federal Aid Federal aid to the drought-affected states was first given in , but the first funds marked specifically for drought relief were not released until the fall of Dust Bowl The term "Dust Bowl" was coined when an AP reporter, Robert Geiger, used it to describe the drought-affected south central United States in the aftermath of horrific dust storms.
The Dust Bowl Ends Most areas of the country were returned to receiving near-normal rainfalls. Lessons Learned Another severe drought spread across the U. Drought in the Dust Bowl Years. The Great Depression. Causes of the Dust Bowl. Farm Family Farm family, Sargent, Nebraska, Coping and Recovering. Establishing health care facilities and supplies to meet emergency medical needs.
Establishing government-based markets for farm goods, higher tariffs, and loan funds for farm market maintenance and business rehabilitation. Providing the supplies, technology, and technical advice necessary to research, implement, and promote appropriate land management strategies.
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