How Did The Dust Bowl Affect Society

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Have you ever seen or heard of a drought so bad that it turned nice green hills into a desert of sand and dirt? Starting in the 1930s, in the eastern part of the country, a very bad drought did just that. It made its way west, and by 1934 it turned the Great Plains into a desert. In 1935 this drought was dubbed the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl had a huge effect on the daily lives of people and their homes, it wreaked havoc on their economy, and destroyed their land.

First and foremost, the Dust Bowl affected the daily lives of people and their homes. According to Source 1, a woman wrote “wearing our shade hats, with handkerchiefs tied over our faces and Vaseline in our nostrils, we have been trying to rescue our home from the wind-blown dust which penetrates wherever air can go.” This made completing regular day-to-day task difficult, because the dirt and sand consumed the air. Also, according to Source 2, a woman wrote, in 1936, “To give just one specific example: the paint has been literally scoured from our buildings by the storms of this and previous years.” Despite people's best effort to keep their homes in good repair the dust continued to make its way into their homes, making their living
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Actually, according to Source 1, the residents believed the Dust Bowl label played a huge role in diminishing property values and business prospects in the region. So, because of the amount of attention the nickname caused, the settlers had a much harder time making money. Additionally, a letter written by a woman in Source 2 says “The prospects for a wheat crop in 1936 still remain extremely doubtful. There has been no moisture of any kind since the light snow of early January.” This meant if the drought continued and they didn’t get any rain they wouldn’t be able to grow a crop which in turn would prevent them from making money. Although money was hard to make during the dust bowl, the real problem was in the

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