1. The Great Depression and the American Dustbowl. By Gemma Ingram x

2. The Great Depression 1930s

3. The Great Depression began with the Wall Street Crash of October, 1929 and rapidly spread worldwide. The market crash marked the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth and personal advancement. Although its causes are still uncertain and controversial, the net effect was a sudden and general loss of confidence in the economic future.

4. The NRA, which ended in 1939, had these roles: Setting maximum prices and wages and competitive conditions in all industries. (NRA) Encouraging unions that would raise wages, to increase the purchasing power of the working class by 93%. (NRA) Cutting farm production so as to raise prices and make it possible to earn a living in farming done by the AAA and successor farm programs.

8. the American Dustbowl. 1930s

9. The Dust Bowl or the Dirty Thirties was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936 (in some areas until 1940). The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops or other techniques to prevent erosion. Deep ploughing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains had killed the natural grasses that normally kept the soil in place and trapped moisture even during periods of drought and high winds.

10. The Dust Bowl was an ecological and human disaster caused by misuse of land and years of sustained drought. Millions of acres of farmland became useless, and hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes; many of these families (often known as “Okies", since so many came from Oklahoma) travelled to California and other states, where they found economic conditions little better than those they had left. Owning no land, many travelled from farm to farm picking fruit and other crops at starvation wages.