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Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s
In the mid 1930s, North America's Great Plains faced one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in world history. Donald Worster's classic chronicle of the devastating years between 1929 and 1939 tells the story of the Dust Bowl in ecological as well as human terms.
Now, twenty-five years after his book helped to define the new field of environmental history, Worster shares his more recent thoughts on the subject of the land and how humans interact with it. In a new afterword, he links the Dust Bowl to current political, economic and ecological issues--including the American livestock industry's exploitation of the Great Plains, and the on-going problem of desertification, which has now become a global phenomenon. He reflects on the state of the plains today and the threat of a new dustbowl. He outlines some solutions that have been proposed, such as "the Buffalo Commons," where deer, antelope, bison and elk would once more roam freely, and suggests that we may yet witness a Great Plains where native flora and fauna flourish while applied ecologists show farmers how to raise food on land modeled after the natural prairies that once existed.
Now, twenty-five years after his book helped to define the new field of environmental history, Worster shares his more recent thoughts on the subject of the land and how humans interact with it. In a new afterword, he links the Dust Bowl to current political, economic and ecological issues--including the American livestock industry's exploitation of the Great Plains, and the on-going problem of desertification, which has now become a global phenomenon. He reflects on the state of the plains today and the threat of a new dustbowl. He outlines some solutions that have been proposed, such as "the Buffalo Commons," where deer, antelope, bison and elk would once more roam freely, and suggests that we may yet witness a Great Plains where native flora and fauna flourish while applied ecologists show farmers how to raise food on land modeled after the natural prairies that once existed.
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First published September 30, 1979
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April 17, 2019
As someone who, a few years back, read Timothy Egan's "The Worst Hard Time," and later saw Ken Burns' Dust Bowl series, my mind has been captured by the terrible struggles engendered when millions of acres of prairie earth no longer could stay attached to the ground below.
As described so well and so dramatically in those renditions: people could not see their hand in front of their face; automobiles were rendered unusable; grown men and women were killed and injured by the electricity generated by the dust storms; and, many were lost and killed because the could not find their way from the barn or garage to the adjacent house.
Professor Worster has given a significant chunk of his adult life to issues involving this devastation. He brings experience with both environmental and economic issues to bear on both past and future challenges. While four stars may reflect my interest rather than Worster's ability to match Egan or Burns in dramatic story-telling, this is a significant book.
The author asks if the prairie has been viewed as just another commodity, to be exploited and discarded? Many farmers have traditionally mistreated their soil and then moved on when it no longer could provide a good crop. When that was combined with the unique nature of the prairie's climate and economic promise there was both a misuse and an overuse of this valuable land. In a few short decades, much of its bounty was gone forever.
Worster correctly notes that the attempt to use underground water to resuscitate the soil may be a further environmental disaster. Aquifers, such as the Ogallala, have been severely depleted and can not be restored to abundance during this century. So, if we in the USA are going to be able to have the crops that allow us a great measure of self-sufficiency, we need to assure that a changing climate does not make a bad situation worse.
Food for thought, because we cannot expect to survive another dust bowl. For a contemporary tale, just look up the Aral Sea, which a half century ago was one of the world's four largest bodies of fresh water and now is less that one tenth of that size due to greed and mismanagement. The suffering of the people living around it has been profound from both an economic and a health perspective. Can we afford to take a chance on something similar happening closer to home? George Santanya, a century ago, said “those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it.” Let's hope we are not "weighed in the balance and found wanting."
As described so well and so dramatically in those renditions: people could not see their hand in front of their face; automobiles were rendered unusable; grown men and women were killed and injured by the electricity generated by the dust storms; and, many were lost and killed because the could not find their way from the barn or garage to the adjacent house.
Professor Worster has given a significant chunk of his adult life to issues involving this devastation. He brings experience with both environmental and economic issues to bear on both past and future challenges. While four stars may reflect my interest rather than Worster's ability to match Egan or Burns in dramatic story-telling, this is a significant book.
The author asks if the prairie has been viewed as just another commodity, to be exploited and discarded? Many farmers have traditionally mistreated their soil and then moved on when it no longer could provide a good crop. When that was combined with the unique nature of the prairie's climate and economic promise there was both a misuse and an overuse of this valuable land. In a few short decades, much of its bounty was gone forever.
Worster correctly notes that the attempt to use underground water to resuscitate the soil may be a further environmental disaster. Aquifers, such as the Ogallala, have been severely depleted and can not be restored to abundance during this century. So, if we in the USA are going to be able to have the crops that allow us a great measure of self-sufficiency, we need to assure that a changing climate does not make a bad situation worse.
Food for thought, because we cannot expect to survive another dust bowl. For a contemporary tale, just look up the Aral Sea, which a half century ago was one of the world's four largest bodies of fresh water and now is less that one tenth of that size due to greed and mismanagement. The suffering of the people living around it has been profound from both an economic and a health perspective. Can we afford to take a chance on something similar happening closer to home? George Santanya, a century ago, said “those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it.” Let's hope we are not "weighed in the balance and found wanting."
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April 15, 2024glad that's over!
June 15, 2015
Not exactly a page turner...
:-)
But I enjoyed every page of it. I was expecting more lurid tales of scoured automobiles and blackened skies, but that part was over with quickly and it concentrated on the four-way collision of politics, economics, bad science and Mother Nature that resulted in the near-destruction of America's low-grass prairie. First time, then again, then again....
Some lessons were learned and some still need to be learned, for instance, in our management of the California desert. current drought conditions are forcing the huge farms to find their irrigation water from farther and farther away, but they'll go on doing so as long as they can afford to pay for it. Of course, it's we who pay for it. The fuel--and the fertilizer--that goes into creating a perfect head of lettuce in the middle of a desert and transporting it 1700 miles to a Texas Walmart store--well, it's inconceivable. We pay for it in our tax dollars, not our grocery budget. If we had to pay what it really costs, farmer's markets would start to look awfully cheap.
:-)
But I enjoyed every page of it. I was expecting more lurid tales of scoured automobiles and blackened skies, but that part was over with quickly and it concentrated on the four-way collision of politics, economics, bad science and Mother Nature that resulted in the near-destruction of America's low-grass prairie. First time, then again, then again....
Some lessons were learned and some still need to be learned, for instance, in our management of the California desert. current drought conditions are forcing the huge farms to find their irrigation water from farther and farther away, but they'll go on doing so as long as they can afford to pay for it. Of course, it's we who pay for it. The fuel--and the fertilizer--that goes into creating a perfect head of lettuce in the middle of a desert and transporting it 1700 miles to a Texas Walmart store--well, it's inconceivable. We pay for it in our tax dollars, not our grocery budget. If we had to pay what it really costs, farmer's markets would start to look awfully cheap.
September 8, 2018
The year is 1937, and yet another black blizzard screams across the Southern Plains. A lonely farmhouse stands in its path. Pushed onward by sixty miles-per-hour winds, the dark cloud surges forward; an Oklahoma farmer ducks inside the house just before he is overtaken by the immense, billowing black cloud of choking dust. Leaning against the door, heart pounding, watching his wife light candles as the outside light diminishes to practically nothing, the farmer and his family can only wait out the storm. How long? The storm could go on for two hours, or two days. The drought parching the Southern Plains is now in its sixth year, and no relief is in sight. Again, the farmer wonders, how long? How long before his family, like so many others, is driven from the farm by the wrath of nature?
Dust Bowl, by Donald Worster, is the story of those people who farmed the Southern Plains throughout the Depression decade of the 1930s. But it is also the story of the larger society the Dust Bowl farmers lived in, and the ecological consequences for the Southern Plains. From the beginning, Worster holds nothing back in describing how American society and the Dust Bowl are connected. He writes:
The Dust Bowl took only 50 years to accomplish. It cannot be blamed on illiteracy or overpopulation or social disorder. 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. (4)
The ecological effects of American culture operating on the Southern Plains are clear:
Some environmental catastrophes are nature’s work, others 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 to the task of dominating and exploiting the land for all it was worth. (4)
To complete his argument, Worster contends that the causes of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression are one and the same: the capitalist system.
In arguing his case, Worster starts by identifying the causes of the dust storms of the 1930s, and what those storms were like for residents of the Southern Plains. Powerful photographs, combined with a stirring narrative, help the reader conjure up images of daily life for farmers and townspeople alike. Those families that persevered through the years of the Dust Bowl evince a grim determination to survive and prosper despite adversity. However, this admirable determination served to mask the inherent weaknesses in the capitalist system on the Southern Plains. Farmers were convinced that “It was drought, and drought alone, that had made the Dust Bowl” (42) and others even denied the Dust Bowl’s existence because to acknowledge disaster meant giving up on the future of the land. But Dust Bowl residents were not the only ones to blame for the ecological disaster of the 1930s: “Unbounded optimism about the future, careless disregard of nature’s limits and uncertainties . . . all these were national as well as regional characteristics.” (43)
In the Dust Bowl, these national characteristics were exemplified by the move toward an exploitative agricultural system featuring tractors, one-crop specialization, tenant farmers, and soil abuse. This agribusiness system of farming, combined with the wildly unpredictable variations in rainfall on the Southern Plains, created a situation of ecological disequilibrium: “There were no restrictions in nature that man must observe; on the contrary, all ecological limits were simply challenges to be overcome by human energy.” (82) The results of this attitude favoring overexpansion to create wealth were foreshadowed by the disaster that hit the cattle industry in 1885-86: “Altogether, their hegemony had lasted a scant two decades before it self-destructed. Had anyone cared to notice then, it was a foretaste of later developments on the plains.” (83) A severe winter killed the cattle, but the disaster was made possible by overuse of the land. Fifty years later the words winter and cattle were replaced with drought and crops, but nothing else had changed.
At this point Worster deepens his arguments with in-depth case studies of Cimarron County, Oklahoma and Haskell County, Kansas. There is statistical analysis of the impact of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) on farming in Haskell County. This analysis shows that even in the AAA programs designed to bring relief to farmers, large capitalists had the advantage. One-crop farmers received higher benefits than diversified farmers under AAA programs, and the more land held, the higher the relief benefits. In addition, to continue to qualify for relief, farmers had to continue planting wheat, the crop most responsible for producing soil erosion in the first place.
After these individual case studies, Dust Bowl deals with facing up to the limits imposed by the landscape. Despite the agricultural overproduction of the 1920s that helped cause a disastrous drop in farm prices, “America had not yet had enough of plenty – it never would. The new emphasis on the limits of expansion brought the loudest protests from Western agriculturalists.” (187) As rains returned in the 1940s, bringing successful wheat crops and prosperity with them, Western farmers began to chafe at the conservation restraints imposed during the New Deal: “The voice of two-dollar wheat is far more persuasive than scientific facts on wind, rain, sun, and soil.” (226) Caught in the vice-like grip of capitalism, farmers once again bowed the knee before the altar of prosperity. The result? In March of 1954, another black blizzard clouded the skies from Texas north to the Canadian border. Fortunately, enough rain fell to avert a full-scale replay of the 1930s, but 1954-1957 saw severe wind erosion on the Great Plains. Land use planning and technological improvements did not significantly alter the balance of land overuse and ecological damage. The land was still a resource to be exploited. This leads Worster to conclude:
This, then, is the agriculture that America offers the world: producing an incredible bounty in good seasons, using staggering quantities of machines and fossil fuels to do so, exuding confidence in man’s technological mastery over the earth, running along the thin edge of disaster. (234)
He could have added that Western farmers used staggering amounts of water for irrigation to produce this bounty as well. Indeed, he does so at other points in Dust Bowl, and in his later book Rivers of Empire, he takes up this argument with a vengeance.
Two things are most impressive about Dust Bowl; the coherence and clarity of the argument, and the style of the narrative. Worster’s proof is clearly laid out for all to see, and the quality of the writing is tremendous. Drawn into the story in the first chapter, the reader is continually presented with anecdotes and facts that convincingly support Worster’s thesis. The photographs are excellent, and Dust Bowl contains useful maps of the region as well. By linking the events of the Dust Bowl with related events both before and after, Worster demonstrates the continuity of cultural response on which his argument is based. The one area I wish was developed more fully is the relationship between technology, land use, and the capitalist system in the Dust Bowl. Another item Worster might revise looking back is his claim on page 77 that Indians did not drastically alter the ecology of the Southern Plains. Finally, Worster’s rather gloomy portrayal of the Dust Bowl may not resonate with readers of an optimistic persuasion. However, that is one point that Dust Bowl is trying to get across: unbounded optimism that disregards science and history in an environmental danger of the worst kind.
Dust Bowl, by Donald Worster, is the story of those people who farmed the Southern Plains throughout the Depression decade of the 1930s. But it is also the story of the larger society the Dust Bowl farmers lived in, and the ecological consequences for the Southern Plains. From the beginning, Worster holds nothing back in describing how American society and the Dust Bowl are connected. He writes:
The Dust Bowl took only 50 years to accomplish. It cannot be blamed on illiteracy or overpopulation or social disorder. 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. (4)
The ecological effects of American culture operating on the Southern Plains are clear:
Some environmental catastrophes are nature’s work, others 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 to the task of dominating and exploiting the land for all it was worth. (4)
To complete his argument, Worster contends that the causes of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression are one and the same: the capitalist system.
In arguing his case, Worster starts by identifying the causes of the dust storms of the 1930s, and what those storms were like for residents of the Southern Plains. Powerful photographs, combined with a stirring narrative, help the reader conjure up images of daily life for farmers and townspeople alike. Those families that persevered through the years of the Dust Bowl evince a grim determination to survive and prosper despite adversity. However, this admirable determination served to mask the inherent weaknesses in the capitalist system on the Southern Plains. Farmers were convinced that “It was drought, and drought alone, that had made the Dust Bowl” (42) and others even denied the Dust Bowl’s existence because to acknowledge disaster meant giving up on the future of the land. But Dust Bowl residents were not the only ones to blame for the ecological disaster of the 1930s: “Unbounded optimism about the future, careless disregard of nature’s limits and uncertainties . . . all these were national as well as regional characteristics.” (43)
In the Dust Bowl, these national characteristics were exemplified by the move toward an exploitative agricultural system featuring tractors, one-crop specialization, tenant farmers, and soil abuse. This agribusiness system of farming, combined with the wildly unpredictable variations in rainfall on the Southern Plains, created a situation of ecological disequilibrium: “There were no restrictions in nature that man must observe; on the contrary, all ecological limits were simply challenges to be overcome by human energy.” (82) The results of this attitude favoring overexpansion to create wealth were foreshadowed by the disaster that hit the cattle industry in 1885-86: “Altogether, their hegemony had lasted a scant two decades before it self-destructed. Had anyone cared to notice then, it was a foretaste of later developments on the plains.” (83) A severe winter killed the cattle, but the disaster was made possible by overuse of the land. Fifty years later the words winter and cattle were replaced with drought and crops, but nothing else had changed.
At this point Worster deepens his arguments with in-depth case studies of Cimarron County, Oklahoma and Haskell County, Kansas. There is statistical analysis of the impact of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) on farming in Haskell County. This analysis shows that even in the AAA programs designed to bring relief to farmers, large capitalists had the advantage. One-crop farmers received higher benefits than diversified farmers under AAA programs, and the more land held, the higher the relief benefits. In addition, to continue to qualify for relief, farmers had to continue planting wheat, the crop most responsible for producing soil erosion in the first place.
After these individual case studies, Dust Bowl deals with facing up to the limits imposed by the landscape. Despite the agricultural overproduction of the 1920s that helped cause a disastrous drop in farm prices, “America had not yet had enough of plenty – it never would. The new emphasis on the limits of expansion brought the loudest protests from Western agriculturalists.” (187) As rains returned in the 1940s, bringing successful wheat crops and prosperity with them, Western farmers began to chafe at the conservation restraints imposed during the New Deal: “The voice of two-dollar wheat is far more persuasive than scientific facts on wind, rain, sun, and soil.” (226) Caught in the vice-like grip of capitalism, farmers once again bowed the knee before the altar of prosperity. The result? In March of 1954, another black blizzard clouded the skies from Texas north to the Canadian border. Fortunately, enough rain fell to avert a full-scale replay of the 1930s, but 1954-1957 saw severe wind erosion on the Great Plains. Land use planning and technological improvements did not significantly alter the balance of land overuse and ecological damage. The land was still a resource to be exploited. This leads Worster to conclude:
This, then, is the agriculture that America offers the world: producing an incredible bounty in good seasons, using staggering quantities of machines and fossil fuels to do so, exuding confidence in man’s technological mastery over the earth, running along the thin edge of disaster. (234)
He could have added that Western farmers used staggering amounts of water for irrigation to produce this bounty as well. Indeed, he does so at other points in Dust Bowl, and in his later book Rivers of Empire, he takes up this argument with a vengeance.
Two things are most impressive about Dust Bowl; the coherence and clarity of the argument, and the style of the narrative. Worster’s proof is clearly laid out for all to see, and the quality of the writing is tremendous. Drawn into the story in the first chapter, the reader is continually presented with anecdotes and facts that convincingly support Worster’s thesis. The photographs are excellent, and Dust Bowl contains useful maps of the region as well. By linking the events of the Dust Bowl with related events both before and after, Worster demonstrates the continuity of cultural response on which his argument is based. The one area I wish was developed more fully is the relationship between technology, land use, and the capitalist system in the Dust Bowl. Another item Worster might revise looking back is his claim on page 77 that Indians did not drastically alter the ecology of the Southern Plains. Finally, Worster’s rather gloomy portrayal of the Dust Bowl may not resonate with readers of an optimistic persuasion. However, that is one point that Dust Bowl is trying to get across: unbounded optimism that disregards science and history in an environmental danger of the worst kind.
August 23, 2021
There's lots of history about the dust bowl era, but Worster's work is unique. The personal stories, the focus and detail of place and outcomes and beliefs make the disaster so real, so personal and expose the economic, political and cultural imperatives that exacerbated an already terrible situation. There's full reveal too of how governmental policies, public opinion and industrialization all worked in concert to accelerate the disaster, silencing the voices of reason. But science and reason change over time, a fluid melange of unknown consequence.
Dust Bowl is horrifying in so many ways, especially that abuse of the land is still happening and there are no indications that the politics, economics and consumerism driving abuse have changed. As frightening is climate change, bringing severe drought to agricultural areas again, and with no change in practices, production or demand the dust bowl is again a reality right in my own back yard. Here in Southern Oregon, reservoirs are dry. Creeks and streams are dry. Wells are dry.
I went to a small farm stand the other day, a fellow now farming on heritage land in Central Point. Good agricultural land but always always troubled by limited water, or water re-directed to residential. I want to support small and family farms and wanted peaches, so delicious and juicy but smaller this year because of drought. I asked him, "how are you handling water?" Irrigation was shut off last month in most districts. He said, "I'm still drawing water. No one's said anything and I don't feel bad because pot growers are stealing water."
"I don't agree," I said. "Stealing water is stealing water."
"So you don't want to buy peaches?"
"I guess you're right, I don't want to buy peaches."
And I put the peaches back and put my money in my pocket. There are so many who are finding other ways to handle water shortages without stealing water. Stealing water affects so many and just isn't right and is difficult to police. But if I go to the grocery and buy peaches there, am I a hypocrite? Who knows how these were grown and whether the growing practices are disruptive or destructive to that region. Organic doesn't certify practice just inputs.
Know your farmer. That's the only way. And in all good conscience, despite local, maybe I shouldn't have or won't be able to have the local I've always enjoyed.
Dust Bowl is horrifying in so many ways, especially that abuse of the land is still happening and there are no indications that the politics, economics and consumerism driving abuse have changed. As frightening is climate change, bringing severe drought to agricultural areas again, and with no change in practices, production or demand the dust bowl is again a reality right in my own back yard. Here in Southern Oregon, reservoirs are dry. Creeks and streams are dry. Wells are dry.
I went to a small farm stand the other day, a fellow now farming on heritage land in Central Point. Good agricultural land but always always troubled by limited water, or water re-directed to residential. I want to support small and family farms and wanted peaches, so delicious and juicy but smaller this year because of drought. I asked him, "how are you handling water?" Irrigation was shut off last month in most districts. He said, "I'm still drawing water. No one's said anything and I don't feel bad because pot growers are stealing water."
"I don't agree," I said. "Stealing water is stealing water."
"So you don't want to buy peaches?"
"I guess you're right, I don't want to buy peaches."
And I put the peaches back and put my money in my pocket. There are so many who are finding other ways to handle water shortages without stealing water. Stealing water affects so many and just isn't right and is difficult to police. But if I go to the grocery and buy peaches there, am I a hypocrite? Who knows how these were grown and whether the growing practices are disruptive or destructive to that region. Organic doesn't certify practice just inputs.
Know your farmer. That's the only way. And in all good conscience, despite local, maybe I shouldn't have or won't be able to have the local I've always enjoyed.
January 4, 2020
Like The Worst Hard Time, but with less emphasis on the individual people and more emphasis on the culture, laws, mores, and attitudes that helped create the Dust Bowl. The author doesn't even pretend to disguise his opinions and biases, which I found refreshing. It's a good, uncomfortable challenge to assumptions that Americans consider fundamental.
March 18, 2022
I learned tons in this book. I can’t explain why I thought it was hard to read or why I wouldn’t tell everyone else they should read it. I think the thesis that individualized consumer based capitalism caused the ecological trauma of the dust bowl is spot on. And I was convicted by the need for local knowledge and local economies.
March 17, 2021
I zoned out during a lot of details that were not really necessary for my purposes, and I felt like most of the book was just a very verbose way of making the same point over and over again. That point was a good point though.
June 4, 2023
this guy SUCKS!
April 16, 2013
In his 1979 work Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s Donald Worster examined the causes and consequences of too extensive farming on the Great Plains. As drought settled into the plains in the early thirties, soil exposed for farming dried out. Small but frequent dust storms in 1932 and 1933 gave way to the great disturbances kicked off on May 9th of 1934 when hundreds of millions of tons of dirt from the northern plains states swirled up into the jet stream. Dubuque and Madison were coated in dust, and an estimated twelve million pounds drifted down onto Chicago. Over the next three days the dust rolled across the east coast from Boston to Savannah, then coated the decks of boats three hundred miles out into the Atlantic. While only the most powerful disturbances carried top soil so far, on the Plains blowing dust storms became a fact of life. Livestock trapped in storms wandered in circles before chocking on the dust and dying, or ground their teeth down to nubs grazing on dusty grass. This was not a freak occurrence, but the logical outcome of a culture that exploited the land for all it was worth. The extreme climate fluctuations of the Plains had made hash of capitalist ambitions before. In the 1870s and 1880s Americans had massacred the bison and replaced them with cattle, stocking the range far beyond the capacity of its grasses and causing lasting damage. The long and severe winter of 1886 outlasted feed supplies. With forage depleted, more than three fourths of the cattle on some ranches starved to death. Then, into “the post-1886 vacuum poured the waiting farmers, armed with iron plows to ‘break the land’ and establish a more democratic tenure.”
Gasoline powered tractors and other mechanized farm equipment came on the market after 1910. Their to power put more acres under cultivation promised higher yields, while the debt farmers incurred to obtain them insured that that was what would happen. As Europe starved following the First World War, demand spiked and more and more acres were plowed under. With the encouragement of the federal government, farmers plowed under over five million acres between 1925 and 1930. By the mid-30s, cloaked in dark, dirty winds, the Plains were exporting farm hands as much as wheat. Tracing the Okie migration west, Worster drew out the irony that the agrarian settlement of the Plains which had begun as a great project of the common man and American democracy was being sent limping, dispossessed, on its way. Nor, he was careful to note, was it entirely because of the environmental disaster that this occurred. After all, almost all of the migrants who left Oklahoma for the open road in the 1930s were from the central and eastern parts of the state, where the dust storms were not as bad. Rather it was mechanization and the rise of agri-business had worked both social and environmental destruction, making human labor less necessary and over-farming much easier in the same stroke. “It cannot be blamed on illiteracy or overpopulation or social disorder,” Worster tells us, “[i]t came about because the culture was operating in precisely the way it was supposed to.” Nor did the solutions engineered by ecologist of the day drive home the radical shift in land use necessary to guard against similar problems in the future. Shelterbelts of ground cover, contour plowing and fallowing were changes confined to the periphery of the essential problem. When drought recurred in the 1950s and 1970s, dust storms returned as well, and from each successive wreckage, better capitalized agribusinesses were able to expand at the expense of smaller operations, bringing ever more businesses-like exploitation. “Conservation as a cultural reform had come to be accepted only where and insofar as it had helped the plains culture reach its traditional expansionary aims” Worster observed. “If that was not failure, then success had a strangely dusty smell about it.”
In the end pages of Dust Bowl the author attempted to lay out a vision for the field of environmental history. Under pressure from social historians the field was changing, focusing on differences in environmental attitudes among different races, classes and genders. It was also becoming fashionable to think more about what nature meant and whose environmental problems were noticed. These social justice questions were beginning to overshadow the much more important questions about the relationship of society as a totality to the land. “We must never again lose sight of the land itself, of its moral and material significance, its agency and influence” Worster wrote, nor “overlook or dismiss the truth claims of the natural sciences, out of misguided deconstructionism or multiculturalism that makes nature whatever any group says.” The land must be front and center, with its own inherent value and meaning; otherwise there would be no new history, only an old history of human ideas and perceptions."
Gasoline powered tractors and other mechanized farm equipment came on the market after 1910. Their to power put more acres under cultivation promised higher yields, while the debt farmers incurred to obtain them insured that that was what would happen. As Europe starved following the First World War, demand spiked and more and more acres were plowed under. With the encouragement of the federal government, farmers plowed under over five million acres between 1925 and 1930. By the mid-30s, cloaked in dark, dirty winds, the Plains were exporting farm hands as much as wheat. Tracing the Okie migration west, Worster drew out the irony that the agrarian settlement of the Plains which had begun as a great project of the common man and American democracy was being sent limping, dispossessed, on its way. Nor, he was careful to note, was it entirely because of the environmental disaster that this occurred. After all, almost all of the migrants who left Oklahoma for the open road in the 1930s were from the central and eastern parts of the state, where the dust storms were not as bad. Rather it was mechanization and the rise of agri-business had worked both social and environmental destruction, making human labor less necessary and over-farming much easier in the same stroke. “It cannot be blamed on illiteracy or overpopulation or social disorder,” Worster tells us, “[i]t came about because the culture was operating in precisely the way it was supposed to.” Nor did the solutions engineered by ecologist of the day drive home the radical shift in land use necessary to guard against similar problems in the future. Shelterbelts of ground cover, contour plowing and fallowing were changes confined to the periphery of the essential problem. When drought recurred in the 1950s and 1970s, dust storms returned as well, and from each successive wreckage, better capitalized agribusinesses were able to expand at the expense of smaller operations, bringing ever more businesses-like exploitation. “Conservation as a cultural reform had come to be accepted only where and insofar as it had helped the plains culture reach its traditional expansionary aims” Worster observed. “If that was not failure, then success had a strangely dusty smell about it.”
In the end pages of Dust Bowl the author attempted to lay out a vision for the field of environmental history. Under pressure from social historians the field was changing, focusing on differences in environmental attitudes among different races, classes and genders. It was also becoming fashionable to think more about what nature meant and whose environmental problems were noticed. These social justice questions were beginning to overshadow the much more important questions about the relationship of society as a totality to the land. “We must never again lose sight of the land itself, of its moral and material significance, its agency and influence” Worster wrote, nor “overlook or dismiss the truth claims of the natural sciences, out of misguided deconstructionism or multiculturalism that makes nature whatever any group says.” The land must be front and center, with its own inherent value and meaning; otherwise there would be no new history, only an old history of human ideas and perceptions."
April 20, 2023
In the midst of the Great Depression in the 1930's, the Great Plains states faced the additional hardship of one of the worst environmental disasters commonly known as the Dust Bowl. Traditionally grassland, the area was not well-suited to the kind of extensive farming that preceded those years. And once the natural grass which held the soil together was gone and the regular cycle of drought hit, there was nothing to stop the wind from blowing it across the land or into huge dust storms that raged for weeks on end. History usually focuses only on the social and economic effects of the Dust Bowl, but Worster adds the environment into the mix and seeks to find the root cause of this man-made disaster. He opens with a quote from Karl Marx, and although he dismisses that in his newly added Afterword as mere bravado, it seems apparent throughout his writing that he's a Marxist in his beliefs. He places the blame on American culture and Capitalism - not on the people, but the culture that encourages and drives them to create bigger farms and use machinery that more effectively tills the land. He argues that inherent to American culture is this behavior of exploiting the land for profit and only through government intervention and control can we avoid this kind of disaster in the future.
I can agree that the greed of Capitalism is laid bare in this disaster and that the land is probably not suitable to the kind of excessive use that happens there. But I'm not convinced that his Socialist suggestions (which unfortunately are not offered in a very concise or summarized way) are the answer. He seems to dismiss and ignore the inherent problems in Socialism and its failure to provide for the people under its rule. Capitalism may not be perfect, but it taps into mankind's natural desire to better one's position through individual efforts, while Socialism in theory recognizes the brotherhood of mankind but fails to provide for even the basic needs of the people (even the author recognizes it is this Capitalist economy that provides food for most of the world). And his suggestions for population control or that the people in that area should go back to bare subsistence farming seems far-fetched. But at least the author is exploring new ideas (or probably just regurgitating old ones from the 60's and 70's), and for that I give him credit.
But while I found many aspects of the book interesting and insightful, overall it's pretty dry reading (pun intended). The statistics become boring and make the book feel excessively academic. The lectures against the evils of American culture were tiresome, and I felt he had a very condescending attitude when discussing the people affected. And I would have enjoyed a better discussion on the natural ecology of the land and it's native plants and animals, which I think would have been more inspiring. But on a personal aside, the one thing that made me realize how boring the book was becoming for me was when I kept losing my place (I'd forget to put the bookmark back where I left off). But when I picked it up again I would read for several pages before I realized that wasn't actually where I left off before. It was like it didn't matter where I read - it all kinda flowed together.
I can agree that the greed of Capitalism is laid bare in this disaster and that the land is probably not suitable to the kind of excessive use that happens there. But I'm not convinced that his Socialist suggestions (which unfortunately are not offered in a very concise or summarized way) are the answer. He seems to dismiss and ignore the inherent problems in Socialism and its failure to provide for the people under its rule. Capitalism may not be perfect, but it taps into mankind's natural desire to better one's position through individual efforts, while Socialism in theory recognizes the brotherhood of mankind but fails to provide for even the basic needs of the people (even the author recognizes it is this Capitalist economy that provides food for most of the world). And his suggestions for population control or that the people in that area should go back to bare subsistence farming seems far-fetched. But at least the author is exploring new ideas (or probably just regurgitating old ones from the 60's and 70's), and for that I give him credit.
But while I found many aspects of the book interesting and insightful, overall it's pretty dry reading (pun intended). The statistics become boring and make the book feel excessively academic. The lectures against the evils of American culture were tiresome, and I felt he had a very condescending attitude when discussing the people affected. And I would have enjoyed a better discussion on the natural ecology of the land and it's native plants and animals, which I think would have been more inspiring. But on a personal aside, the one thing that made me realize how boring the book was becoming for me was when I kept losing my place (I'd forget to put the bookmark back where I left off). But when I picked it up again I would read for several pages before I realized that wasn't actually where I left off before. It was like it didn't matter where I read - it all kinda flowed together.
January 3, 2018
Loved this book! Great work in environmental history!
May 30, 2024
I live in an area that would have been affected by the dust bowl. In fact, I live in an area that is still heavily agricultural. Small towns dot areas between large swathes of corn fields. This book, written in the late 1970s and the mindset of the farmers in the 1930s mirror those of the people he interviewed both during the 1970s and the farmers of today. “God will provide”, the soil is a resource that doesn’t really need to be taken care of, plant more to get more money, and the number one goal is profit today as opposed to a sustainable farm for the future. In the last year few years I’ve seen a return to fence to fence planting, the removal of old windbreak trees, and the filling in of ditches to increase the plantable area of corn. Very little prairie has been reestablished in my county where 99.7% was historically tilled under. There will be a crisis in farming, whether it’s the collapse due to lack of water out west or total soil degradation here in the Midwest, it’s coming. This book is a sullen reminder that things never really change and how quickly history is forgotten.
April 19, 2021
3.5 Stars. If you’ve read Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, you are already familiar with the outcome of the drought in the Southern Plains region of the U.S. This book is a detailed, historic report of the same time period.
Until reading this book, I knew very little about the Dust Bowl years, Black Sunday, or the western migration. I found all of this information to be both heartbreaking and incredibly interesting. The most impactful part of the book for me was the tenacity and fortitude of the people.
Donald Worster goes into a lot of detail about the politics involved in finding a long term resolution to this problem. From farmers to local governments to the President, very few people come off very good unfortunately. It seemed like there was an endless number of opinions about the cause and the solution, but very little action.
While I enjoyed reading about the People and the Science, the political arguments lost my attention. Overall, it was an informative read.
Until reading this book, I knew very little about the Dust Bowl years, Black Sunday, or the western migration. I found all of this information to be both heartbreaking and incredibly interesting. The most impactful part of the book for me was the tenacity and fortitude of the people.
Donald Worster goes into a lot of detail about the politics involved in finding a long term resolution to this problem. From farmers to local governments to the President, very few people come off very good unfortunately. It seemed like there was an endless number of opinions about the cause and the solution, but very little action.
While I enjoyed reading about the People and the Science, the political arguments lost my attention. Overall, it was an informative read.
Want to read
January 3, 2023New ed of Dust Bowl [25th anniv] with intro by author
Donald Worster was born in 1941 and grew up in *Hutchinson*, Kansas, graduating from Hutchinson High School. He received a Bachelor of Arts in 1963 and a Master of Arts in 1964 from the University of Kansas. He continued his education at Yale University, earning an M.Phil. in 1970 and a PhD. in history in 1971 working with Howard R. Lamar.
After retirement from University of Kansas, he became Distinguished Foreign Expert and senior professor in the School of History of *Renmin University* of China.
Donald Worster
The Good Muck: Toward an Excremental History of China
[Transformations in Environment and Society] Rachel Carson Center,
2017
heard interview on Eat This Podcast. 14 Dec 2020
Donald Worster was born in 1941 and grew up in *Hutchinson*, Kansas, graduating from Hutchinson High School. He received a Bachelor of Arts in 1963 and a Master of Arts in 1964 from the University of Kansas. He continued his education at Yale University, earning an M.Phil. in 1970 and a PhD. in history in 1971 working with Howard R. Lamar.
After retirement from University of Kansas, he became Distinguished Foreign Expert and senior professor in the School of History of *Renmin University* of China.
Donald Worster
The Good Muck: Toward an Excremental History of China
[Transformations in Environment and Society] Rachel Carson Center,
2017
heard interview on Eat This Podcast. 14 Dec 2020
August 26, 2020
This book is an in-depth look at a specific place and period in American history (midwest/plains states in the 1930s). The prose is clear but very dry, thoroughly researched and fact-laden; it is more suitable as research material for a college course than casual pleasure-reading. Originally published in 1979, many of the book's themes, especially with respect to environmentalism, nature and climate change are relevant today. Target audience is those interested in ecology, farming, politics and American history.
August 9, 2022
In his classic study, Dust Bowl, Donald Worster drew inspiration from Marx, Weber, and Darwin, and applied their insights to the man-made disaster in the Great Plains. Originally published in 1979, Dust Bowl was an important historiographical moment in the emergent field of environmental history. With each succeeding chapter, Worster connected history to geography, society to economics, and ecology to cultural criticism, and then effortlessly wove them together into a unified whole. Yet another example of the indispensable benefit of an interdisciplinary approach.
May 2, 2020
A little bit of data, a whole lot of socialist-minded moralizing and rear-view mirror judgments - like, to the point that the author quotes Marx and Engels about the Dust Bowl (?). I can't help but shake the idea that the author seems to have an almost hostile view of the farmers that lived in the High Plains, continuously referring to them as "greedy" and pointing out how hostile they were to ecological science.
August 22, 2020
Excellent book, really well written, though certainly not uplifting. Gripping, but not over-sensational as many approaching the Dust Bowl can be. If you are interested in historical materialism, especially as it relates to agriculture, ecology and the American West this is a really worthwhile read. Compared to a tome like Nature's Metropolis it is really quite brief. I'm excited to read more by Don Worster.
October 23, 2022
This book was the start of my lesson in the Dust Bowl, past the average lesson in the subject. While it was a dry read it is full of information and thought that is lesser given on the subject. Less about person to person life and dealings and more about the government, laws and science behind the dust bow.
A read for anyone looking for informaton on te dust bowl with more thought to how and why..and what if.
A read for anyone looking for informaton on te dust bowl with more thought to how and why..and what if.
April 26, 2024
"There is no God west of Salina..."
Excellent history. In addition to providing ample detail about the Dust Bowl event, Worster unpacks integral processes involved in agricultural & economic development in the United States. I came away with a much better understanding of how federal government agencies work and the tensions between scientific development ideals and the structural forces of capitalism.
Excellent history. In addition to providing ample detail about the Dust Bowl event, Worster unpacks integral processes involved in agricultural & economic development in the United States. I came away with a much better understanding of how federal government agencies work and the tensions between scientific development ideals and the structural forces of capitalism.
January 22, 2019
Fascinating period of history and Worster does a thorough job. Perhaps a bit too thorough. Large sections were really dry with an onslaught of numbers and facts. Other parts were quite enlightening, especially thoughts on water usage in the plains and the need to better connect with the land, avoiding large areas of monoculture plantings.
July 6, 2021
A 1970s book, which means it describe people's memory in a highly caricatured, tragic, and aloof way. The writing is good though, and Worster's own ambivalent attachment to Great Plains is remarkable. However, his environmental history must include more people, ideas, and power relations. We now live a story that's far more complex than he thought some 40 years ago.
January 4, 2021
I am writing my dissertation on drought in the 1930s. This has been my favorite historical book on the Dust Bowl. Hurt provides a more balanced analysis but Worster delivers more interesting things to think about, including a sweeping condemnation of capitalistic enterprise on the Great Plains.
March 12, 2023
Fascinating look at history from one of the founders of the field of Environmental History. Worster, born in the plains, puts himself in the story and explains the creation of the Dust Bowl from an academic yet personal experience. Many lessons to apply for current times.
August 11, 2018
I enjoyed this book it just wasn't as informative as Ken Burns book.
August 20, 2018
Very enjoyable! Describe the reasons behind this terrible history of this period and the hand that humans error had in creating this mess.
June 13, 2019
A greatly detailed chronicle of one of the greatest man made ecological disasters ever. It's a fine preview of the challenges, both scientific and human, that we are facing with climate change.
October 19, 2020
Overall a really good read and surprisingly ahead of its time in terms of an environmental history of the Dust Bowl.
February 8, 2023
environmental history for the win.
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