The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl |...

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl | Timothy Egan | 80 million acres stripped of their topsoil, end of agricultural free market economics, and birth of the welfare state

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The Worst Hard Tim...

	The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl Timothy Egan Mariner Books, 2006 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 182 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years
of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since.
Timothy Egan's critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter
of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical
reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities through
the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to
carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the
death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe,
Egan does equal justice to the human characters who become
his heroes, "the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he
opens up with urgency and respect" (New York Times).

In an era that promises ever-greater natural disasters, The Worst
Hard Time is "arguably the best nonfiction book yet" (Austin Statesman
Journal) on the greatest environmental disaster ever to be visited
upon our land and a powerful cautionary tale about the dangers of
trifling with nature.

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The American dust bowl and the grit and gumption of those who will never forget

Subtitled "The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl", this 2006 non-fiction account of this American tragedy is historical writing at its best. The author is a Pulitizer Prize winning reporter for the New York Times. I loved his simple but powerful writing style which had a touch of literary description that kept me fascinated throughout its 312 pages.

Once upon a time the Great Plains was grassland. For thousands of years it was a place where buffalo and bison grazed. The land is flat, the winds strong, there is little rain, and the variation in temperature extreme. There was no rich soil under the grass. In the early part of the 20th century the buffalo was gone but there were ranches where cattle grazed. But through a combination of factors, including the rapid expansion of the railroads, the government gave away small parcels of this land for farming. This was a bargain for thousands of families who were willing to settle this land. Some were immigrants with hopes and dreams and little money. All looked forward to a good life. And, for a time it was.

Problem was that the grass was ploughed under in order to plant crops. This destroyed the small amount of topsoil that was holding the grass in place. When America entered the World War I, there was a need for wheat. The price for wheat was high. Farmers began to prosper. They took bank loans and bought more and more land which they planted with wheat. When the war ended there was too much wheat, the price went down and the wheat rotted. But that was just the beginning. Huge storms of dust started to blow. People tried to keep it from their houses with by covering the windows with wet sheets. But the dust particles were so small, they got through the barriers. People sickened with lung problems, children died of "dust pneumonia", crops couldn't grow, and people were almost starving.

Some stayed on the land. The Depression was hitting the whole country. There was no place for them to go.

This is their story, told though the eyes of people who lived through it, some of whom are still there. Woven through this story are historical facts and horrific descriptions of the terror of the storms. And, later, even when President Roosevelt tried to help by having trees planted, bringing in a variety of different seeds, and teaching the people contour farming, grasshoppers ruined the crops once again.

There were times I felt like crying as I read the book. And there were times I felt nothing but respect for the grit and gumption and hard work of the farmers. Today, some people still live in this "dust bowl' and modern technology has brought water to the region. But it is still sparsely populated and the people still there will "never forget".

Read this book. It will open your eyes about a part of Americana with a unique and horrific history.

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80 million acres stripped of their topsoil, end of agricultural free market economics, and birth of the welfare state

1. In 1930, 256 banks had failed and the cry was "where did our money go?" Oil prices for a barrel dropped from $1.43 to 10 cents. The economy was a pile of glue.

2. By Sep 1929, 1.5 million people were out of work. In 1930, 1,350 banks failed, going under with $853 million in deposits. The next year, 2,294 banks failed. In 1931, the Bank of the United States in New York with two million dollars defaulted. When the bank defaulted, twelve million jobs were lost or 25 percent of the work force.

3. In 1931, 28,000 business closed doors, both private and corporate. Money was not circulating. When the banks closed people scourged for food. People were starving. At the same time wheat was being piled up and wasted. On the Texas Panhandle, two million acres had been turned to sod. The wheat came in at 250 million bushels. Farmers were desperate to pay debt, but slowly bleeding out, for every five dollars earn they lost one. Milk, pork, and cattle prices dropped correspondingly as people were unable to pay price and commodity bust transpired, too much supply and not enough paying customers.

4. In 1931, there were thirty-three million acres stripped bare in the southern plains. The market price was 50 percent the cost for the farmer to break even. Normally, this inefficiency would have resulted in default and supply drops, but debt and speculation allowed prolonged oversupply, further exasperating the condition.

5. A two year hit Montana and the soil turned to fine particles and started to roll, stir, and take flight. Wheat dropped to 19 cents a bushel - an all time low. Tens of thousands had their savings swept away. The US food Administration set a price guarantee for wheat that set off a stampede transforming the grasslands and the price controls created long-term shortages. However, American capitalism was in a deep freeze.

6. By 1932, nearly two-thirds of the farmers face foreclosure, for back taxes and debt. One in twenty were losing their land.

7. In a cashless society people lived off home industry: eggs laid in coups, vegetables grown in garden, pigs slaughtered for bacon, and cows milked to feed young and old. Water from windmills provide irrigation means.

8. The Argiculture College of Oklahoma reported in their state during the wheat bonanza, sixteen million acres was planted in wheat and thirteen million acres left to seriously erode and this was before the drought and calcification of the ground. Neglect of the land was a significant contributor to the dust bowls. Abandonment caused from sudden price drops, commodity distribution problems, and easy money entrapment forcing debt repayment behavior that exploit natural resources.

9. High temperatures during winter did not kill off many of the pests. Epidemic insect pollutions flourish: grasshoppers, spiders, and centipedes invaded every living space.

10. Sitting Bull had predicted the land would get it revenge on whites who forced the Indians off the grasslands. He saw doom from the sky.

11. President Roosevelt ended agricultural free market economics for good. Roosevelt said: America had produced more food than any country in history, and farmers were being run off the land, penniless, while the cities couldn't feed themselves. The average farmer earned three hundred dollars a year, an 80 percent drop in income from a decade earlier. Government would try to shape the price and flow of food, to force prices up. Roosevelt had the government buy surplus corn, beans, and flour, and distribute it to the needy. Over six million pigs were slaughtered, and meat given to relief organizations. The Welfare state was born. Under Roosevelt, government was the market. The Civilian Conservation Corps built dams, bridges, retains, roads, and lakes and ponds. Roosevelt signed a bill giving farmers two hundred million dollars to help farmers facing foreclosure. The Volstead act permited the sale of 3.2 percent beer.

12. By some estimates their were 80 million acres in the southern plains stripped of their topsoil.

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Choked Up

Hurricanes come and go along America's Atlantic and Gulf Coasts. Property and lives are destroyed, but often rebuilt. There's some comfort in knowing that indefatigable Mother Nature caused the damage.

But in the plains and panhandles of Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, an unprecented and unyielding natural disaster, rooted in the uprooting of native grasses in the name of progress, blew dirt into peoples' lives for almost the full decade of the '30s, killing thousands, ruining countless businesses, and emptying towns. It came to be known as the Dust Bowl, and Timothy Egan's book "The Worst Hard Times" tells the story via the recollections of a few octa- and nonagenarians who were there and lived through it.

Egan's narratives built around these recollections are heartbreaking. I could only read two chapters at a time without getting choked up emotionally as the denizens of the area, living in sod houses coughed up dirt, buried young children who'd died of dust pneumonia, and lived lives of grueling poverty. The Irish potato famine is the only agricultural disaster that I've read about that could top it. When the grasshoppers come calling, another outcome of the destruction of an ecosystem, the effect becomes biblical.

Part two of the story which recounts the federal government's effort to alleviate the disaster, is necessarily less compelling. Egan brings the story back to a more personal level in the last few chapters by sharing the diary of a Nebraska farmer who struggles to maintain a life with his wife.

A broader aspect of the tale is the lesson about understanding the fragility of ecosystems and showing respect for natural habitats developed over thousands of years.

"The Worst Hard Time" ranks with "Isaak's Storm" about the 1900 hurricane that destroyed Galveson, TX, as the best history books I've read about American natural disasters. The involvement of people who lived to tell the tale makes Egan's book even more compelling.

Highly recommended to all readers, although a little depressing for teenagers who aren't history buffs.

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A must read for history buffs!

Fabulous story -- makes you feel like you're living the life... Also, makes you appreciate what we have today!

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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