The Great Dust Bowl of the 1930s

I was watching the History Channel the other day and they had a special on the dust bowl of the 1930's and it's causes. The #1 cause of the drought was thought to be that the jetstream moved and shifted south which brought less rain to the prairies.

That was only part of the reason. After the government hired a soil expert to go examine the ground, he concluded that the major fault for the drought and the topsoil blowing around lay solely with the government.

Why? When the U.S. government wanted to settle the midwest, they offered homesteads in the fertile ground for farming. Without farming, they correctly concluded, there wouldn't be much to eat so they offered the land at modest prices to entice the farmers in to grow crops.

That was the fertile ground. There were other millions of acres that were not so fertile. There were areas of not much rain, and perhaps the soil wasn't so rich. Prairie grass grew there, but little else could handle the harsh conditions.

The government tried to get people to settle in this area also, but found it a bit difficult as people knew it wasn't good crop land. So, they upped the ante and offered double the land and that got the people moving there from countries where land ownership was either forbidden or very rare.

When the people moved into the prairie grasslands, they plowed them under and planted crops. The crops did not grow, so they plowed them under the following year and planted more crops. These crops did not grow either. Over a few years, the topsoil had very little to hold it down and it blew around with the slightest wind.

This, in conjunction with the jet stream shift, lead to a very severe drought. The dust in the air stopped the sunlight from evaporating the moisture that was in the soil so it stayed there, instead of heading into the sky like it should, and leading to rain.

The net result of this was the dust bowl. No crops, drought and dust storms were the norm. Living conditions were miserable and along with the depression, made things almost unbearable.

If the government had not offered this land for development, the prairie grass would have stayed. When the jet stream then shifted south, the topsoil would have stayed where it was.

Abuse of the land lead to this disaster and the blame for this is strictly with the government who encouraged farmers to settle there.

If this sounds familiar, it should. The government is to blame for our current economic crisis as they encouraged bankers and mortgage companies to give loans to people they never should have. This lead to an economic "dust bowl" that should never have happened in this country.

When I make a mistake, I only affect myself and perhaps my immediate family. When the big Gov. makes a mistake, it causes hardships for millions and they usually point the finger elsewhere. The time has come to get rid of big government and remove their power over our economic lives.