Wall St.Crash
The Great Depression was an economic crisis that began with the Wall Street Crash in October 1929, considered one of the most terrible events of the 1900s.
The causes which led to the crash were several, especially high consumer debt, poorly regulated markets that permitted overoptimistic loans by banks and investors, and the manufacturing of durable goods like automobiles and appliances, whose demand was unexpectedly decreased.
The stock market crash marked the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth as well as for personal advancement. Altogether, there was a general loss of confidence in the economic future.
The Depression also resulted in an increase of emigration for the first time in American history and also mass migrations of people from badly hit areas, as highlighted by the Great Migration and the Dust Bowl.
Dust Bowl
This period of severe dust storms greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s, caused by severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods.
After fairly favorable climatic conditions in the 1920s with good rainfall and relatively moderate winters, the region entered an unusually dry era in the summer of 1930.
With insufficient understanding of the ecology of the plains, farmers had conducted extensive deep plowing plowing: turn up the earth/soil of an area of land with a plow, especially before sowing/seeding.
of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains during the previous decade; this had displaced the native, deep-rooted grasses that normally trapped soil and moisture even during periods of drought and high winds.
Without the indigenous grasses in place, the unanchoredunanchored: not anchored or securely fixed. soil turned to dust, which the strong continental winds blew away in huge clouds known as "black blizzards".
On November 11, 1933, a very strong dust storm stripped topsoil from desiccated South Dakota farmlands in just one of a series of severe dust storms that year.
On May 9, 1934, a strong, two-day dust storm removed massive amounts of Great Plains which blew all the way to cities to the east.
On April 14, 1935, known as "Black Sunday", one of the worst "black blizzards" occurred across the entire sweep of the Great Plains, from Canada south to Texas.
A dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas, in 1935.
Migration to California
This catastrophe intensified the economic impact of the Great Depression in the region, when losses reached $25 million per day by 1936 (equivalent to $460,000,000 in 2019). The severe drought and dust storms had left more than 500,000 Americans homeless; others had their mortgages foreclosed by banks, or felt they had no choice but to abandon their farms in search of work. Parents packed up "jalopies" jalopy: old and damaged car in barely functional state. with their families and a few personal belongings, and headed west in search of work.
The Dust Bowl is considered as the largest migration in American history within a short period of time. Between 1930 and 1940, approximately 3.5 million people moved out of the Plains states. In just over a year, over 86,000 people migrated to California. This number is more than the number of migrants to that area during the 1849 Gold Rush.
Migrants abandoned farms in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico, but were often generally derogatorily referred to as "Okies", "Arkies", or "Texies", which became standard terms for those who had lost everything and were struggling the most during the Great Depression.
After the peak of 1935, due to controlled land use and better irrigation, the phenomenon lost its intensity until it almost disappeared.
Mass Migration’s Cultural Influence
The Dust Bowl has been the subject of many cultural works. The crisis was documented by photographers, musicians, and authors, many hired by the federal government through the Farm Security Administrationduring, to document the Great Depression’s crisis.
Artists such as Dorothea Lange captured what have become classic images of the dust storms and migrant families. Among her most well-known photographs is "Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California.", also known as “Migrant Mother”.
“Migrant Mother”. Mother of Seven Children, which depicted a gaunt-looking woman, Florence Owens Thompson, holding three of her children. This picture expressed the struggles of people caught by the Dust Bowl and raised awareness in other parts of the country.