Dust Bowl Documents

Document A: Henderson Letter (modified)
Source: Caroline Henderson’s letter to Henry A. Wallace, sent July 26, 1935.
For twenty-seven years this little spot on the vast expanses of the Great Plains has been the center of
all our thought and hope and effort. And marvelous are the changes that we have seen . . . The almost
unbroken buffalo grass sod has given way to cultivated fields. The old trails have become wide graded
highways. Little towns have sprung up with attractive homes, trees, flowers, schools, churches, and hospitals.
Automobiles and trucks, tractors and combines have revolutionized methods of farm work and manner of
living. The wonderful crop of 1926 when our country alone produced 10,000,000 bushels of wheat – more it
was said than any other equal area in the world – revealed the possibilities of our productive soil under
modern methods of farming. It seemed as if at last our dreams were coming true. . . .
Yet now our daily physical torture, confusion of mind, and gradual wearing down of courage, seem to
make that long continued hope look like a vanishing dream. For we are in the worst of the dust storm area
where “dust to eat” is not merely a figure of speech, but the phrasing of a bitter reality. . . .
In this time of severe stress, credit must be given to the various activities of the federal government.
Without such aid as has been furnished, it seems certain that large sections must have been virtually
abandoned. Yet common sense suggests that the regions which are no longer entirely self-supporting cannot
rely indefinitely upon government aid. So the problem remains and the one satisfactory solution is beyond all
human control. Some of our neighbors with small children, fearing the effects upon their health, have left
temporarily “until it rains.” Others have left permanently, thinking doubtless that nothing could be worse.
1. According to Henderson, what are three changes that happened in Oklahoma during the 1910s and
1920s? What is her attitude about these changes?
2. How does the author describe life in Oklahoma in 1935? What are two examples of how people
experienced the Dust Bowl?
3. How does this document help you address the question: What caused the Dust Bowl?
Document B: Svobida Account (modified)

Source: Lawrence Svobida, Farming the Dust Bowl: A First-Hand Account from Kansas, first published in
1940.
Excerpt 1:
The gales chopped off the plants even with the ground, then proceeded to take the roots out. They did
not stop there. They blew away the rich topsoil, leaving the subsoil exposed: and then kept sweeping away
the “hard-pan,” which is almost as hard as the concrete.
This was something new and different from anything I had ever experienced before – a destroying
force beyond my wildest imaginings. When some of my own fields started blowing, I was utterly bewildered.
...
According to [my neighbors’] information, there was little hope of saving a crop once the wind had
started blowing; and the only known method of checking the movement of the soil was the practice of strip
listing. This meant running deep parallel furrows twenty or thirty feet apart, in an east and west direction,
across the path of the prevailing winds. This tends to check the force of the wind along the ground and
allows the fine silt-like dust to fall into the open furrows.
Excerpt 2:
There had been overgrazing before the coming of the settlers and the invasion of barbed wire, but the death
knell of the Plains was sounded and the birth of the Great American Desert was inaugurated with the
introduction and rapid improvement of power farming. Tractors and combines made the Great Plains regions
a new wheat empire, but in doing so they disturbed nature’s balance, and nature is taking its revenge.
1. According to Svobida, how did the dust and wind affect crops?
2. What exactly does Svobida mean by the phrase “power farming”? What would be the difference between
traditional farming and “power farming”?
3. What, according to this Svobida, were two causes of the Dust Bowl?
4. How is Svobida’s account similar to and different from Henderson’s letter?
Document C: Government Report
Source: Excerpt from the Report of the Great Plains Drought Area Committee, sent to President Roosevelt
on August 27, 1936.
Personal and Confidential from Morris Cooke. August 27, 1936
Dear Mr. President,
The Committee has made a preliminary study of drought conditions in the Great Plains area with the
hope of outlining a long term program which would render future droughts less disastrous. . .
The agricultural economy of the Great Plains will become increasingly unstable and unsafe, in view
of the impossibility of permanent increase in the amount of rainfall, unless overcropping, overgrazing and
improper farm methods are prevented. There is no reason to believe that the primary factors of climate
temperature, precipitation and winds in the Great Plains region have undergone any fundamental change.
The future of the region must depend, on the degree to which farming practices conform to natural
conditions. Because the situation has now passed out of the individual farmer’s control, the reorganization of
farming practices demands the cooperation of many agencies, including the local, State, and Federal
governments.
Mistaken public policies have been largely responsible for the situation now existing. The Federal
Government must do its full share in remedying the damage caused by a mistaken homesteading policy, by
the stimulation of wartime demands which led to overcropping and overgrazing, and by encouragement of a
system.
1. What problem is this report addressing? Is this a reliable account? Why or why not?
2. What, according to this report, were three causes of the Dust Bowl?
Document D: Historian, Professor Donald Worster
Source: Excerpt from Professor Donald Worster’s book titled, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
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 that deliberately, self-consciously, set itself that task of
dominating and exploiting the land for all it was worth. . . .
The Dust Bowl . . . came about because the expansionary energy of the U.S. had finally encountered
a volatile, marginal land, destroying the delicate ecological balance that had evolved there. We speak of
farmers and plows on the plains and the damage they did, but the language is inadequate. What brought them
to the region was a social system, a set of values, an economic order . . . Capitalism, it is my contention, had
been the decisive factor in this nation’s use of nature.
Document E: Historian, Professor R. Douglas Hurt
Source: Excerpt from Professor R. Douglas Hurt’s book titled, The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social
History (Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1981).
Plains as a whole, were not unique to the 1930s . . . Many factors contributed to the creation of the Dust
Bowl – soils subject to wind erosion, drought which killed the soil-holding vegetation, the incessant wind,
and technological improvements which facilitated the rapid breaking of the native sod. The nature of
southern Plains soils and periodic influence of drought could not be changed, but the technological abuse of
the land could have been stopped. This is not to say that mechanized agriculture irreparably damaged the
land – it did not. New and improved implements such as tractors, one-way disk plows, grain drills, and
combines reduced plowing, planting, and harvesting costs and increased agricultural productivity. Increased
productivity caused prices to fall, and farmers compensated by break ing more sod for wheat. At the same
time, farmers gave little thought to using their new technology in ways that would conserve the soil.
1. What do Professors Worster and Professor Hurt identify as the causes of the Dust Bowl?
2. Do the other documents support this conclusions? Why or why not?
3. In what ways are Worster and Hurt’s accounts different?

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Document A: Henderson Letter (modified)

Document B: Svobida Account (modified)

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