Preview

The Dust Bowl and the Wall Street Crash

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
329 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Dust Bowl and the Wall Street Crash
The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl is the name given to the awful dust storms which caused major damage to American and Canadian prairie lands in the 1930s.
The Dust Bowl got its name after Black Sunday, April 14, 1935. There were lots of dust storms leading up to that day. In 1932, 14 dust storms were recorded on the Plains. In 1933, there were 38 storms. By 1934, it was estimated that 100 million acres of farmland had lost all or most of the topsoil to the winds. By April 1935, there had been weeks of dust storms. Winds were clocked at 60 mph.
"The impact is like a shovelful of fine sand flung against the face," Avis D. Carlson wrote in a New Republic article.
The day after Black Sunday a journalist used the term "Dust Bowl" for the first time, the term stuck and was used by radio reporters and writers, in private letters and public speeches.
The wall street Crash
The Wall Street Crash, also known as Black Tuesday, started in October 1929 and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States. The crash triggered the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western countries and did not end in America until they joined World War II at the end of 1941.
Anyone who had shares in the stock market in mid 1929 had to wait their whole lifetime just to break even.
When the Wall Street stock market crashed in October 1929, the world economy sunk into the Great Depression. By the winter of 1932, America was in the greatest economic depression in its history.
The number of unemployed people went over 13 million. Many people lived a life of poverty and were starving. One New York family moved into a cave in Central Park. In St Louis, more than 1,000 people lived in shacks made from scrap metal and boxes. Between 1 and 2 million people travelled the country desperately looking for work. Signs saying 'No Men Wanted' were displayed all over the country.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The economy of the United States expanded greatly through the 1920's reaching its climax in August 1929. By this point, production had already declined and unemployment was at an all-time high, leaving stocks to imitate their real value. During the stock market crash of 1929, better known as Black Tuesday, investors traded vast numbers of shares in a single day, causing billions of dollars to be lost and millions of investors to be eliminated. This "crash" signaled the beginning of a decade long Great Depression that would affect all Western industrialized nations; a crash that would later become known as one of the darkest, longest lasting, economic downturns in American history. People all around the world suffered greatly as personal income,…

    • 232 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In reference to The Worst Hard Time, the Dust Bowl hit a widen plain ranging from…

    • 1168 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    On October 29, 1929, Wall Street crashed which led onto more than 10 years of The Great Depression. This day was called, “Black Tuesday”. Black Tuesday was caused by consumers getting scared…

    • 288 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Originally covered with grasses that held the fine soil in place, the land of the southern plains was plowed by settlers who brought their farming techniques with them when they homesteaded the area.” The Dust Bowl, otherwise known as “The Dirty Thirties”, was made possible by World War I (WWI) and The Great Depression. Wheat was easy to grow and it caused a high demand. Little was known that the misuse of the land would bring upon the greatest influence behind the importance of conserving nature and its importance of carefully using the land. The dust storms were brought on by a mix of natural components and human activities. Thus, the tempests brought on numerous individuals to leave their homes, endure the dust, and lastly change how they…

    • 140 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Dust Bowl of North America was a disaster in the early 1930's when huge parts of the Midwestern and Western farmlands of America became wastelands. This happened due to a series of dry years, which agreed, with the extension of agriculture in unsuitable lands. Droughts and dust storms caused by poor labor practice troubled farms and ranches of the Great Plains; causing a great migration of its people to other, more fertile, lands. The problem had become so great that a nation wide effort was made to resolve the problem. In 1935, big efforts were made by both federal and state governments to develop suitable programs for soil conservation and for the recovery of the dust bowl. Eventually farming became possible again in the Dust Bowl so farmers have learned many lessons from this.…

    • 558 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    "The Dust Bowl took only 50 years to accomplish...It came about because the culture was operating in precisely the way it was supposed to. Americans blazed their way across a richly endowed continent with a ruthless, devastating efficiency unmatched by any people anywhere. Some environmental catastrophes are nature's work, others are the slowly accumulating effects of ignorance or poverty. The Dust Bowl, in contrast was the inevitable outcome of a culture…

    • 214 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Originally covered with grasses that held the fine soil in place, the land of the southern plains was plowed by settlers who brought their farming techniques with them when they homesteaded the area.” The Dust Bowl, also called "The Dirty Thirties", was made conceivable by World War I (WWI) and The Great Depression. Wheat was anything but difficult to develop and it brought on a popularity amongst everyone. Little was realized that the abuse of the area would bring upon the best impact behind the significance of saving nature and its significance of deliberately utilizing the area. The dust storms were brought on by a mix of natural components and human activities. Thus, the tempests conveyed on numerous individuals to leave their homes, persevere through the dust, and lastly change how they cultivated, keeping in mind the end goal to avert comparable characteristic fiascos.…

    • 487 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dust Bowl The lives of millions were changed when the dust came to town. Crops were lost. Lives were lost. Human dignity was in short supply.…

    • 669 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Would you enjoy eating a bowl of dust? That doesn’t sound appealing, does it? Well, the people in the driest regions of the plains had to in the 1930’s. This was the time of the Dirty Thirties. Tough time for them. The Dirty Thirties was also the time of the Dust Bowl. What was the Dust Bowl you may ask. According to History.com, “The Dust Bowl was the name given to the Great Plains region devastated by drought.” The Dust Bowl occurred in the 150,000 square-mile area surrounding the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. “This region has little rainfall, light soils, and high winds, a potentially destructive combination,” as said by History.com.…

    • 619 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Beginning in the 1930’s, and causing terror ever since, the Dust Bowl has been one of the worst times in our history. Many farms in the American Great Plains Region were destroyed because of the drought and dust storms. “It was this giant wall coming towards you.” Floyd Coen describes the 2,000 foot high wall of dust during the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was a perfect storm of natural disaster that affected thousands of people.…

    • 490 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Dust Bowl Dbq

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Seemingly innocent, in the 1900s there began the worst manmade catastrophe to ever be recorded in history, the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl, also referred to as the “Dirty Thirties,” was a time of extremely disastrous dust storms that significantly affected the agriculture of the U.S. Promised cheap land, farmers engulfed the Southern Plains and began to plow the land to grow wheat, not taking into consideration the climate and soil or ecology of the land; and there was the biggest mistake made in the Dust Bowl. During the drought of the 1930s, the soil was turned into dust and the wind blew the dust in huge clouds, which would sometimes cause the sky to blacken, giving it the name “black blizzard.” Dust storms mostly affected areas of Texas,…

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Dust Bowl Odyssey

    • 921 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The "Dust Bowl" phenomenon occurred throughout western Oklahoma and Kansas and in the Texas panhandle. Severe drought during the 1930's had led to massive agricultural failures in the Southwest. These areas had been heavily overcultivated by the wheat farmers for the last decades and were covered with millions of acres of loose, uncovered topsoil. Without precipitation the crops withered and died. The topsoil, which did not have any anchoring roots, was picked up by the winds and carried in billowing clouds across the region. Huge dust storms blew across the area, at times blocking out the sun and even suffocating those caught unprepared.…

    • 921 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms that greatly hurt agriculture in the US and Canada during the 1930s. Severe droughts and a failure to dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion caused the phenomenon. The Dust Bowl was in the southern states, mainly near the coast. The Dust Bowl drought started in 1934 and ended in 1937. The Dust Bowl was a long period of time where people had nothing but their own…

    • 434 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The first cause of the Dust Bowl was the progress in technology. Farmers were thrilled when faster and more effective tools were made to harvest crops instead of the horse-drawn plow. Tractors, plows, and combines were added to most farmers daily routines, the tools that helped change everything. 10 horses were the equivalent to the work of one tractor. Combines cut and threshed the grain in one swoop, using less than half as much labor. Plows worked faster at uncovering more soil and ripping up more grass. Harvesting was going great and…

    • 661 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Causes Of The Dust Bowl

    • 605 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Dust Bowl began on Thursday, April 18, 1935, it was a huge, black, cloud of dirt, piled up on the western horizon. This storm was enormous and deadly. The Dust Bowl affected Oklahoma, Texas, parts of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. These states were vulnerable to the dust storm due to their lack of rainfall, light soil, and high winds. As a result, soil lacked the the strong roots of grass in order to stay in place, this made it easier for high, hectic winds to get a hold of the soil. Years before the Dust Bowl, ranchers and farmers looking for new land to grow crops and maintain live stock stumble across this land. Hoping to finally settle down and start their business; however, on 1935, the very land that gave them hope, now gave them…

    • 605 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays