Lesson 6 Americans Suffer Part 2 April 12th

mhm. Hello, students, and welcome back as we continue our

discussion from last week about Americans suffering, uh, through the

Great Depression.

Uh, so let's begin.

In cities and towns across the nation, Americans face a

terrible flight.

The number of of an unemployed, homeless and hopeless increased,

like the casualty list in some great war in rural

America, people feared no better.

In fact, sometimes their conditions was even worse.

Farmers have been suffering even before the Great Depression, falling

commodity prices and accumulating debt had made it a struggle

for farmers to keep their heads above water.

Many fell to stay afloat and sank so deep that

they lost their farms.

Yeah, something Crop prices fell within, the bottom fell out

of the economy, and the depression added more woes.

Crop prices fell even farther, and new debts were added

to the old debts.

To make matters even worse, the Great Plains were suffering

through a choking drought and ecological disaster that lasted for

years. As a result, for many farmers lost their farms

and moved.

They traveled about the country looking for work and fighting

for survival.

Their basic reality of a farm life was low prices

paid to farmers for crops.

They grew from market in 1919 a bushel, Wheat sold

for $2.16 in 1932.

It only sold for 38 cents.

A pound of cotton fetched 35 dollars and 34 cents

in 1919.

The £7 fetched $6.52 in 1932.

The sharp fall in price was evident with other farming

products. Corn and beans, cattle and hogs The incoming farmers

generated would not was not enough to allow them to

continue farming.

They cannot pay their debts, purchase more seed repair equipment

and by what their families needed to survive.

Overburdened by the diminished returns for their labor, some farmers

buckled under the stress.

In Sucks County, Illinois, 1932 the Sucks County Milk Producers

Association threatened to strike if a member did not see

higher profits for their milk.

When the association threatens were ignored by local store owners.

Farmers dumped 1000 gallons of milk on the road outside

the city.

Despite such drastic and for many Americans, unthinkable actions, farmers

everywhere feared losing everything.

Losing the family farm between 1930 1930 for nearly one

million farmers failed to pay their mortgages and lost their

farms. Banks foreclose on the land and houses and repossess

their farming equipment.

The bank sold what they could at public auction.

Some farmers remained on the land as tenant farmers, working

for bigger landowners rather than for themselves.

But another effect was that many people drifted away from

their rural communities and migrated to cities to look for

some other kind of work.

Cesar Chavez, who later became a well known labor organizer,

recalled the troubles his proud father had during the Depression.

A California bank repossessed his father's small ranch, and the

family was evicted from their house.

Chavez remembers how it felt to lose his home.

We have been poor, but we knew every night there

was a bed there and this was our room.

But that all of the sudden change when you're small,

you can't figure these things out.

You know something's not right and you don't like it,

but you don't let that get you down.

You sort of just continue moving.

Like the Chavez family, other farmers moved on after their

losses. But for those who remained, Mother Nature dealt a

cruel blow to an already cruel time.

The Dust Bowl farmers who survived the trouble.

The tumbling prices were still not safe.

Through the mid 19 thirties, the drought in the Great

Plains added to the poor.

The problems.

Water was constant problem in the reason normal rainfall seldom

exceeded the 20 inches a year the traditional American agricultural

practices demanded.

As a result, droughts on the great plans were often

more devastating than those in the East and Midwest.

In the years before Americans Western rivers were dammed and

irrigation practices became widespread, there were a few answers to

the drought threat.

New farming methods may drought conditions Even worse, intense farming

came to prominence through the region in the late 19th

and early 20th centuries.

Farmers then had to move on to the plans and

plow under much of the natural grasses in order to

plant oceans of winter wheat.

And after 19 oh nine, there were many more farmers

to. In that year, the federal government expanded the acreage

allotted to the Homestead Act to 320 acres per settler.

So the new wave of transplant decided to try farming

on the often marginal lands that were still available in

the great plans.

All this intensive farming reduce the amount of grasslands available,

graze livestock, causing over ridges on the wheat on what

was left.

In addition, new tractor pull disc ploughs pulled to pulverize

the soil, making it more vulnerable to wind arose in

population growth.

And the shift in population distribution, along with new methods

of farming, tip the ecological balance in the region.

In the past, planes grassy for invented the topsoil from

blowing away during periods of drought by the early 19

thirties. That dwindling grass safety net can no longer do

the job, 1930 to a combination of human geographic factors

of loose topsoil caused by over farming and grazing.

And the physical geography factor of drought and high winds

resulted in disaster On the Great Plains, the wind kicked

up towering dust dust storms that began to blow east.

These gigantic clouds of dust and dirt could rise from

the ground, who level to a height of 8000 ft.

The dust storms moved as fast as 100 MPH and

blotting out the sun, plunging daylight into darkness.

Most of the dust storm started in the southern Great

Plains, especially the high Plains region of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas,

New Mexico and Colorado.

This author parched Earth became known as the Dust Bowl

for people living in these hardest hit regions.

Depression and dust storms define the misery of the dirty

thirties, those unfortunate enough to be caught in a dust

storm where temporary choked and blinded by the swirling dirt,

the storms killed cattle and birds, blanket rivers and suffocated

fish. Dirt seeped into houses, covering everything with a thick

coat of grime.

Some dust clouds blue east as far as the Atlantic

coast, dumping acres of dirt on Boston, New York and

Washington, D.

C. Altogether, the dust storms displaced twice as much as

Americans had scooped out to build the Panama Canal.

Uh, moving wherever work can be found.

Many foreign families trapped in the dust bowl had little

choice but to leave the region.

They had lost their farms to the banks and had

nowhere to live.

Dust storms has destroyed most remaining opportunities.

In there, local reason.

They were low on everything except despair, although some came

from Oklahoma.

Dust bowl refugees were generally referred to as Okies, regardless

of their state of origin.

Okay, families packed into rickety trucks and headed towards California,

Oregon or Washington any place where a job might be

found. Before the pace slowed, 80 800,000 people migrated out

of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas alone.

The collapse of our agriculture in the Great Plains Dust

Bowl caused millions of other Americans to leave the Midwest

and southern regions where they were born.

Many migrants migrated to California, lured by the promise of

jobs where were crushed when they promised two of them

proved empty.

In reality, the migrants face fierce competition from Mexican Americans,

Filipinos and other farm laborers who were also seeking work.

Many of them gave up farming and headed for nearby

cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego,

hoping to find factory work or join the military.

Other farm families headed north and east to the cities

of the Northeast and Midwest, again looking for jobs, shelter

and relief.

One of the irreversible effects of the massive migration.

Some 2.5 million people left the plain states alone was

the rural states lost population, while states with large cities

gained population.

It was one of the largest migrations in the nation's

history, once again changing the nation's demographic patterns.

The Dust Bowl had other effects as well.

The farmer's best able to survive the Great Depression were

the ones with the biggest operations.

They often but repossess land, have rock bottom prices and

expanded their holdings into large commercial farms.

The Dust Bowl also motivated the government to help the

great plain farmers.

After the initial crisis.

Immense federal projects damned western rivers.

Damned eventually provided irrigation that made farm profits possible in

the Great Plains.

Okay, so you can kind of see the area hardest

hit by the, uh, dust bowl.

Uh, kind of in the northern Panhandle of Texas and

the East Coast are eastern portions of New Mexico, Colorado,

Wyoming, all the way up into Canada.

Uh, this is how you can see the kind of

drought and the drop in wheat prices and everything else.

Uh, which region experienced the most severe effects of the

Dust bowl?

A. The Midwest be the Pacific coast.

See the southern Great Plains or D the Appalachian Highlands.

There you guys have it.

Thank you for paying attention.

And I will see you guys tomorrow.

Thank you.

Lesson 6 Americans Suffer Part 2 April 12th

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