Problem
I. Donald Worster's book focuses on the Dust Bowl disaster on the Southern Plains, but he is adamant that the national economic crisis of the Great Depression was not simply coincident with the ecological disaster of the Dust Bowl, but was in fact the outcome of the same set of fundamental problems in American society. Explain his arguments and provide your evaluation? Is his thesis persuasive? Why or why not?
II. The Dust Bowl had national consequences, but its worst effects hit the Southern Plains. That didn't mean that farmers elsewhere in the US had an easy time of it during the 1930s, however.
As this article notes, farmers in the Upper Midwest (including Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa, faced a dire crisis of their own:
"To have realized returns equal to the costs of production in 1932 a farmer would have had to receive 92¢ per bushel for corn, 11¢ a pound for hogs, and 62¢ per pound of butterfat. Prevailing prices in June 1932 were 10¢ per bushel for corn, 3¢ per pound for hogs, and 18¢ per pound for butterfat."
Overall, by the winter of 1933 the purchasing power of farm commodities was less than 1/3 of 1914.
So in that price environment, how do you survive as a small farmer? To simplify some of the decision matrix, consider the prices noted above and the options they presented. You could grown corn and sell it on the market, or you could feed it to hogs or dairy cattle. Which makes the most economic sense? What would you choose to do, and why? Why did farmers NEED cash income so urgently? What would happen if they didn't get it?
Ferner Nuhn, a journalist for the left-wing magazine The Nation, traced the rising militancy of Upper Midwest farmers in a 1933 article "The Farmer Learns Direct Action." How did these farmers respond to the crisis, and how would you feel if you had been living in the region and this had happened in your community?
III. As residents were desperate to make it rain to stop the Dust Bowl. What would be resources and/or ideas that would help circumvent the disaster?