May. 02, 2007 - 22:44 MDT

THE EFFECT

In my late years I am finally coming to an understanding of the history I lived through in my young years. I have done quite a bit of reading on the subject, but all the facts were not presented to me, or, at least not to my understanding.

In today�s Rocky Mountain News is an article by George Will printed in the Washington Post, which gives me a better understanding of what went on. I shall quote his article in part here :

� - - - - - - - It is a story about the unintended consequences of technological progress and government policies.�

�Who knew that when the Turks closed the Dardanelles during World War I, it would contribute to stripping the topsoil of vast portions of Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and Kansas.�

�The closing cut Europe off from Russian grain. That increased demand for U.S. wheat. When America entered the conflict, Washington exhorted farmers to produce even more wheat, and guaranteed a price of $2 a bushel, more than double the 1910 price.�

�A wheat bubble was born. It would burst with calamitous consequences..�

�After the war, the price plunged and farmers, increasingly equipped with tractors, responded by breaking up more prairie, plowing under ever more grassland in desperate attempts to compensate for falling wheat prices with increased volume. That, however, put additional downward pressure on the price, which was 40 cents a bushel by 1930.�

�The late 1920s had been wet years, and people assumed that the climate had changed permanently for the better. Before the rain stopped, 50,000 acres a day were being stripped of grasses that held the soil when the winds came sweeping down the plain.�

�In 1931, the national harvest was 250 million bushels, perhaps the greatest agricultural accomplishment in history.� � - - - - notes that it was accomplished by removing prairie grass, �a web of perennial species evolved over 20,000 years or more.�

�Americans were about to see how an inch of topsoil produced over millenia could be blown away in an hour.�

On Jan. 21, 1932. A cloud extending 10,000 feet from ground to top, a black blizzard with - - - - �an edge like steel wool� - looked like a range of mountains on the move as it grazed Amarillo, Texas, heading toward Oklahoma. At the end of 1931, a survey found that of the 16 million acres cultivated in Oklahoma, 13 million were seriously eroded.�

�On May 10, 1934, a collection of dust storms moved over the Midwest, carrying, - - - - three tons of dust for every American alive.� It dumped 6,000 tons on Chicago that night . By morning the storm was 1,800 miles wide �� a great rectangle of dust� weighing 350 million tons � and was depositing the surface of the great Plains on New York city, where commerce stopped in the semi-darkness.�

�On the southern plains, dust particles, one -fifth the size of the period at the end of this sentence and high in silica content, penetrated lungs, jeopardizing new borns and causing �dust pneumonia� in others. Houses were so porous that the only white part of a pillow in the morning was the profile of the sleeper. Storms in March and April dumped 4.7 tons of dust per acre on western Kansas, denting the tops of cars. During one storm, the wind blew at least 40mph for 100 hours. - - - - reports that it would have required a line of trucks 96 miles long, hauling 10 loads a day for a year � 46 million truckloads � to transport the dirt that had blown from western to eastern Kansas.�

�In Washington, in a Senate hearing room, a man was testifying to bored legislators about the need for federal aid for the southern plains. A Senator suddenly exclaimed, �It�s getting dark outside.� The sun vanished and the air turned copper-color, thanks to red dust that the weather bureau said came from the western end of Oklahoma�s panhandle. The aid was approved the next day.�

�The southern plains got - - - - frenzied skies of grasshoppers � sometimes 14 million per square mile � because the insects natural predators were gone. Eventually, however, rain fell on the convulsed land and on the teenacious people who never left it, and the government devised soil conservation measures.� /P>

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There is more to this article and some of the quotes are references to a book by Timothy Egan titled : THE WORST HARD TIME: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THOSE WHO SURVIVED THE GREAT AMERICAN DUST BOWL, a book I intend to buy.

I remember the grit between my teeth on closing my mouth, the little pile of dust that blew through the keyhole of our doors and the drifts of dust below the windows where there was the slightest gap I remember the clouds overhead seemingly all the time, at least that is how I remember it, the sun might have shone now and then. I remember the days of drought as well, wind swirling dust and detritus about.

And the thing of it was the fact that the Stock Market Crash in October 1929 exacerbated everything woeful. Those folks who ordinarily help, hadn�t the money or resources to give much in the way of aid.

I was fortunate, my meals were regular and sufficient. However I did get very sick of pinto beans and hotdogs, couldn�t look bologna in the face without the urge to barf. However some of my playmates would come over and I�d make peanut butter sandwiches and hand them out. They had to be satisfied with water as milk was at a premium. My Mom thought I had a hell of an appetite, which I did but not as bad as the dwindling supply of bread, butter and peanut butter indicated.

I don�t think any of us were sad sacks about it as we were more or less all in the same boat, we just �went with the flow,� and made our way as best we could.

Two such calamities in one generation, followed by World War II boggles my mind.

So at this late date, two and two are beginning to resemble four, grim as it might be. Perhaps some day I can get a lucid rundown, in understandable terms on what caused our Great Depression, but I�m not going to hold my breath, but it would be nice to find out the cause - - - I already know THE EFFECT . . . . . . . . . . .

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