17,394
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 1:
Line 1: − + − + Line 105:
Line 105: − + + + − The [[Dust Bowl]] got its name on April 15, 1935, the day after Black Sunday. Robert Geiger, a reporter for the [[Associated Press]], traveled through the region and wrote the following: "Three little words achingly familiar on a Western farmer's tongue, rule life in the dust bowl of the continent - if it rains." The term stuck, spreading to radio broadcasts and publications, in private letters and public speeches. − − The [[Soil Conservation Service]] used the term on their maps to describe "the western third of [[Kansas]], Southeastern [[Colorado]], the [[Oklahoma]] Panhandle, the northern two-thirds of the [[Texas]] Panhandle, and northeastern [[New Mexico]]." The SCS Dust Bowl region included some surrounding area, to cover one-third of the Great Plains, close to 100 million acres, 500 miles by 300 miles. It is thought that Geiger was referring to an earlier image of the plains coined by William Gilpin, who had compared the great plains to a fertile bowl, rimmed by mountains. Residents hated the label, which was thought to play a part in diminishing property values and business prospects in the region. − − The Drought alone did not cause the black blizzards. Although dry spells are unavoidable in the region, occurring roughly every 25 years, it was the combination of drought and misuse of the land that led to the incredible devastation of the Dust Bowl years. 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. Wheat crops, in high demand during [[World War I]], exhausted the topsoil. Overgrazing by cattle and sheep herds stripped the western plains of their cover. When the drought hit, the land just blew away in the wind. − − A letter from an Oklahoma woman, later published in [[Reader's Digest]] magazine, recalls June of 1935. "In the dust-covered desolation of our No Man's Land here, wearing our shade hats, with handkerchiefs tied over our faces and vaseline in our nostrils, we have been trying to rescue our home from the wind-blown dust which penetrates wherever air can go. It is almost a hopeless task, for there is rarely a day when at some time the dust clouds do not roll over. 'Visibility' approaches zero and everything is covered again with a silt-like deposit which may vary in depth from a film to actual ripples on the kitchen floor." − − Beginning in 1935, federal conservation programs were created to rehabilitate the Dust Bowl, changing the basic farming methods of the region by seeding areas with grass, rotating crops, and using contour plowing, strip plowing, and planting "shelter belts" of trees to break the wind. Farmers were defensive when outsiders criticized their farming methods. Only when they were paid did they begin to put the new farming techniques into practice. The dollar per acre they earned often meant the difference between being able to stay a bit longer or having to abandon their land. As historian Robert Worster wrote, "The ultimate meaning of the dust storms of the 1930s was that America as a whole, not just the plains, was badly out of balance with its natural environment. Unbounded optimism about the future, careless disregard of nature's limits and uncertainties, devotion to self-aggrandizement - all these were national as well as regional characteristics." − − == The New Deal ==
move to Dust Bowl
The '''Great Depression''' was a severe, worldwide economic downturn which lasted from 1929 until around the beginning of [[World War II]] in the early 1940s.
The '''Great Depression''' was a severe, worldwide economic downturn which lasted from 1929 until around the beginning of [[World War II]] in the early 1940s.
==Causes==
Advocates of different economic systems have traded blame for the depression.
Advocates of different economic systems have traded blame for the depression.
===Austrian School===
*As documented so well by free-market economists Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard, during the 1920s, the Federal Reserve Board, exercising its power to expand the money supply, caused an inflationary binge — an action which created a false aura of prosperity. When the political authorities — faced with this inflationary threat and restrained by the gold standard — finally ceased the monetary expansion near the end of the decade, the inevitable economic hangover was reflected in the 1929 stock market crash and in generally depressed economic conditions. In other words, contrary to the indoctrination which the American people have received from their political authorities, the Great Depression was not the failure of America's free-enterprise system — it was the failure of political manipulation of money and credit.
*As documented so well by free-market economists Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard, during the 1920s, the Federal Reserve Board, exercising its power to expand the money supply, caused an inflationary binge — an action which created a false aura of prosperity. When the political authorities — faced with this inflationary threat and restrained by the gold standard — finally ceased the monetary expansion near the end of the decade, the inevitable economic hangover was reflected in the 1929 stock market crash and in generally depressed economic conditions. In other words, contrary to the indoctrination which the American people have received from their political authorities, the Great Depression was not the failure of America's free-enterprise system — it was the failure of political manipulation of money and credit.
*Faced with the Great Depression — a depression which had been caused by government itself — Roosevelt's "solution" was to implement [[economic planning]]. Under the banner of "saving America's free-enterprise system," FDR was directly responsible for the abandonment of America's 150-year history of free enterprise. <ref>http://www.fff.org/freedom/0891a.asp</ref>
*Faced with the Great Depression — a depression which had been caused by government itself — Roosevelt's "solution" was to implement [[economic planning]]. Under the banner of "saving America's free-enterprise system," FDR was directly responsible for the abandonment of America's 150-year history of free enterprise. <ref>http://www.fff.org/freedom/0891a.asp</ref>
== The Drought ==
== The Drought ==
The drought hit first in the eastern part of the country in 1930. In 1931, it moved toward the west. By 1934 it had turned the Great Plains into a desert. "If you would like to have your heart broken, just come out here," wrote Ernie Pyle, a roving reporter in Kansas, just north of the Oklahoma border, in June of 1936. "This is the dust-storm country. It is the saddest land I have ever seen."
See [[Dust Bowl]]
== The New Deal ==
see [[New Deal]]
Enforcement of the Antitrust Act was considered as an essential instrument to prevent [[cartel]]s and trusts and combinations in restraint of trade which were supposed to be deadly to the system of free enterprise. During the fall [[United States presidential election, 1932|election of 1932]], Franklin Roosevelt called for strict enforcement of the Antitrust Act as part of his proposed New Deal. Yet immediately upon Roosevelt's election enforcement was suspended in order to cartelize every industry in America on the [[Fascism|Italian corporative model]].
Enforcement of the Antitrust Act was considered as an essential instrument to prevent [[cartel]]s and trusts and combinations in restraint of trade which were supposed to be deadly to the system of free enterprise. During the fall [[United States presidential election, 1932|election of 1932]], Franklin Roosevelt called for strict enforcement of the Antitrust Act as part of his proposed New Deal. Yet immediately upon Roosevelt's election enforcement was suspended in order to cartelize every industry in America on the [[Fascism|Italian corporative model]].