On Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s by Donald Worster
by Shane Timson
For High Plains Polar Radio Readers Club, I'm Shane Timson in Colby, Kansas.
Today, I'm talking about the book Dust Bowl, The Southern Plains in the 1930s by Donald Worster. This book is a fascinating read because I have studied this topic probably more than any other since moving to Kansas in 1986. And this book has brought up some things that other books haven't brought up, and that's what I want to talk about today.
One of the first ones I want to point out that he talks about is that America is not the only one to have a dust bowl problem. There was a dust bowl in the 1960s in the Soviet Union, but Khrushchev covered it up. Now that I'm become aware of it, I'm going to try to research that. Maybe there's a book out there, and maybe we'll talk about that in future Radio Readers BookByte.
Also, we hear that FDR won his election quite handily, even in Republican states such as Kansas, because he said that he was going to help the plains states deal with this crisis of the Dust Bowl. However, it would be a year after taking office before he would deal with the problem. It happened when one day he was in a cabinet meeting and dust started coming into the White House. He asked one of his staffers, "What is this?"
And they responded, "Mr. President, it's that Kansas dirt." The dirt was often referred to as Kansas dirt, even though it came from many other plain states, like Oklahoma and Texas, but it was often called Kansas dirt.
We also have learned something that I haven't heard other authors or documentary makers do, what he did here, what David Worster did here was say that the Great Depression and the dust bowl were kind of related. The Great Depression happened because of the stock market crash in 1929. He cites it was overly excited capitalists that caused that Great Depression. He said it was overly excited farmers responding to corporate farming as well as busting up the land that caused the problem of the dust bowl.
In fact, in the book, he said that when the white man came to the plains states and drove the Indians off, white man said, quote, "We are going to break and bust up the land." And that is what we did.
And the author says that, when the dust bowl happened, Native Americans said, "This is white man's wrath. wrath on the white man for busting up the land and not respecting it the way that the Native Americans did.”
I decided to read this book, and I've been watching a lot more on the Dust Bowl lately, because I wonder, could we have one again? It seems like this year alone, I feel like we've had more dust storms than I can remember in recent times.
These are dust storms, bad enough that it's shut down the highways because people couldn't see where they're going. There have a number of deaths because of accidents on the highways and byways.
Oh, before I go, if you would like some good listening, if you want to hear a good album talking about the Dust Bowl, get Woody Guthrie's 1940s album “The Dust Bowl Ballads.” I think you'll be glad you did. That album is mentioned in this book. And Woody Guthrie is always mentioned in pretty much anything about the Dust Bowl because he toured it and lived it firsthand.
For High Plains, Public Radio Readers Club, I'm Shane Timson from Colby, Kansas.
