{"id":6003,"date":"2022-04-04T15:01:02","date_gmt":"2022-04-04T15:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/?post_type=chapter&#038;p=6003"},"modified":"2022-09-26T18:30:59","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T18:30:59","slug":"the-dust-bowl-and-farming-during-the-depression","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/wm-ushistory2\/chapter\/the-dust-bowl-and-farming-during-the-depression\/","title":{"raw":"The Dust Bowl and Farming During the Depression","rendered":"The Dust Bowl and Farming During the Depression"},"content":{"raw":"<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\r\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Identify the unique challenges that farmers in the Great Plains faced during the Great Depression<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Describe the circumstances and significance of the Dust Bowl<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<h2>Rural America During the Depression<\/h2>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp34563232\">Despite the widely held belief that rural Americans suffered less in the Great Depression due to their ability to at least grow their own food, this was not the case. Farmers, ranchers, and their families suffered incredible losses during the Depression. Life for all rural Americans was difficult. Farmers largely did not experience the widespread prosperity of the 1920s. Although continued advancements in farming techniques and agricultural machinery led to increased agricultural production, decreasing demand (particularly in the previous markets created by World War I) steadily drove down commodity prices. As a result, farmers could barely pay the debt they owed on machinery and land mortgages, and even then could do so only as a result of generous lines of credit from banks. While factory workers may have lost their jobs and savings in the crash, many farmers also lost their homes, due to the thousands of farm foreclosures sought by desperate bankers. Between 1930 and 1935, nearly 750,000 family farms disappeared through foreclosure or bankruptcy. Even for those who managed to keep their farms, there was little market for their crops. Unemployed workers had less money to spend on food, and when they did purchase goods, economic conditions had driven prices so low that farmers earned very little in the way of profit. A now-famous example of the farmer\u2019s plight is that farmers would simply burn corn to stay warm in the winter when the price of coal began to exceed that of corn.<\/p>\r\nOn the Great Plains, environmental catastrophe deepened America\u2019s longstanding agricultural crisis and magnified the tragedy of the Depression. Beginning in 1932, severe droughts hit from Texas to the Dakotas and lasted until at least 1936.\r\n<h2>Environmental Catastrophe Meets Economic Hardship: The Dust Bowl<\/h2>\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"520\"]<img src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23203140\/CNX_History_25_03_DustBowl.jpg\" alt=\"A photograph shows a group of houses on the Great Plains. A massive dust cloud fills the sky overhead.\" width=\"520\" height=\"339\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/> <strong>Figure 1.<\/strong> The dust storms that blew through the Great Plains were epic in scale. Drifts of dirt piled up against doors and windows. People wore goggles and tied rags over their mouths to keep the dust out. (credit: U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)[\/caption]\r\n\r\nFrom the turn of the century through much of World War I, farmers in the Great Plains experienced prosperity due to unusually good growing conditions, high commodity prices, and generous government farming policies that led to a rush for land. As the federal government continued to purchase all excess produce for the war effort, farmers and ranchers fell into several bad practices, including mortgaging their farms and borrowing money against future production in order to expand. However, after the war, prosperity rapidly dwindled, particularly during the recession of 1921. Seeking to recoup their losses through economies of scale in which they would expand their production to take full advantage of their available land and machinery, farmers plowed under native grasses to plant acre after acre of wheat, with little regard for the long-term repercussions to the soil. Regardless of these misguided efforts, commodity prices continued to drop, finally plummeting in 1929, when the price of wheat dropped from two dollars to forty cents per bushel.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"397\"]<img class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23203142\/CNX_History_25_03_Farm.jpg\" alt=\"A photograph shows an abandoned farmhouse and farm equipment that were largely buried under dust.\" width=\"397\" height=\"298\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/> <strong>Figure 2.<\/strong> As the Dust Bowl continued in the Great Plains, many had to abandon their land and equipment, as captured in this image from 1936, taken in Dallas, South Dakota. (credit: United States Department of Agriculture)[\/caption]\r\n<h3>Drought<\/h3>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp29269520\">Exacerbating the problem was a massive drought that began in 1931 and lasted for eight terrible years. Dust storms roiled the Great Plains, creating huge, choking clouds that piled up in doorways and filtered into homes through closed windows.<\/p>\r\nThe droughts compounded years of agricultural mismanagement. To grow their crops, Plains farmers had plowed up natural ground cover that had taken ages to form over the surface of the dry Plains states. Relatively wet decades had protected them, but during the early 1930s, without rain, the exposed fertile topsoil turned to dust, and without sod or windbreaks such as trees, rolling winds churned the dust into massive storms that blotted out the sky, choked settlers and livestock, and rained dirt not only across the region but as far east as Washington, D.C., New England, and ships on the Atlantic Ocean. The <strong>Dust Bowl<\/strong>, as the region became known, exposed all-too-late the need for conservation. The region\u2019s farmers, already hit by years of foreclosures and declining commodity prices, were decimated.\u00a0For many in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas who were \u201cbaked out, blown out, and broke,\u201d their only hope was to travel west to California, whose rains still brought bountiful harvests and\u2014potentially\u2014jobs for farmworkers. It was an exodus. Oklahoma lost 440,000 people, or a full 18.4 percent of its 1930 population, to outmigration.\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp25662464\">The suffering of farmers during the Dust Bowl years took many forms. Livestock died or had to be sold, as there was no money for feed. Crops intended to feed the family withered and died in the drought. Terrifying dust storms became more and more frequent, as \u201cblack blizzards\u201d of dirt blew across the landscape and created a new illness known as \u201cdust pneumonia.\u201d The land suffered as well. In 1935 alone, over 850 million tons of topsoil blew away. To put this number in perspective, geologists estimate that it takes the earth five hundred years to naturally regenerate one inch of topsoil; yet, just one significant dust storm could destroy a similar amount. In their desperation to get more from the land, farmers had stripped it of the delicate balance that kept it healthy. Unaware of the consequences, they had moved away from such traditional practices as rotating crops and planning alternate growing seasons so that land could lay fallow between plantings and thus regenerate. The land was effectively worked to death in the pursuit of short-term gain.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<div class=\"textbox key-takeaways\">\r\n<h3>Migrant mother<\/h3>\r\nDorothea Lange\u2019s\u00a0<em>Migrant Mother<\/em>\u00a0became one of the most enduring images of the Dust Bowl and the ensuing westward exodus. Lange, a photographer for the Farm Security Administration, captured the image at a migrant farmworker camp in Nipomo, California, in 1936. In the photograph a young mother stares out with a worried, weary expression. She was a migrant, having left her home in Oklahoma to follow the crops to the Golden State. She took part in what many in the mid-1930s were beginning to recognize as a vast migration of families out of the southwestern Plains states. In the image she cradles an infant and supports two older children, who cling to her. Lange\u2019s photo encapsulated the nation\u2019s struggle. The subject of the photograph seemed used to hard work but down on her luck, and uncertain about what the future might hold.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_6021\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"503\"]<a href=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5696\/2022\/04\/04153431\/Lange-Migrant-Mother-e1408474615332.jpeg\"><img class=\"wp-image-6021\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5696\/2022\/04\/04153431\/Lange-Migrant-Mother-e1408474615332.jpeg\" alt=\"This iconic photograph made real the suffering of millions during the Great Depression. \" width=\"503\" height=\"640\" \/><\/a> <strong>Figure 3<\/strong>. This iconic 1936 photograph by Dorothea Lange of a destitute, thirty-two-year-old mother of seven made real the suffering of millions during the Great Depression.\u00a0Library of Congress.[\/caption]\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\r\n<h3>Watch It<\/h3>\r\nThe Dust Bowl was a time of terrible weather conditions across huge swaths of America's agricultural land due to poor farming practices and persistent drought. One of the most devastating of these storms became known as Black Sunday.\r\n\r\n<center><iframe src=\"\/\/plugin.3playmedia.com\/show?mf=8197319&amp;p3sdk_version=1.10.1&amp;p=20361&amp;pt=375&amp;video_id=pJ9QOcVt1Hc&amp;video_target=tpm-plugin-1kkemykm-pJ9QOcVt1Hc\" width=\"800px\" height=\"450px\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0px\" marginheight=\"0px\"><\/iframe><\/center><center>You can view the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/course-building.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/US+history+II\/TheDustBowlandtheDepression.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">transcript for \u201cThe Dust Bowl and the Depression\u201d here (opens in new window)<\/a>.<\/center><\/div>\r\n<h2>Country Bank Closures<\/h2>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp1263920\">Unlike most factory workers in the cities, in many cases, farmers lost their homes when they lost their livelihood. Most farms and ranches were originally mortgaged to small country banks that understood the dynamics of farming, but as these banks failed, they often sold rural mortgages to larger eastern banks that were less concerned with the specifics of farm life. With the effects of the drought and low commodity prices, farmers could not pay their local banks, which in turn lacked funds to pay the large urban banks. Ultimately, the large banks foreclosed on the farms, often swallowing up the small country banks in the process. It is worth noting that of the five thousand banks that closed between 1930 and 1932, over 75 percent were country banks in locations with populations under 2,500. Given this dynamic, it is easy to see why farmers in the Great Plains grew wary of big-city bankers.<\/p>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idm10480224\">For farmers who survived the initial crash, the situation worsened, particularly in the Great Plains where years of overproduction and rapidly declining commodity prices took their toll. Prices continued to decline, and as farmers tried to stay afloat, they produced still more crops, which drove prices even lower. Farms failed at an astounding rate, and farmers sold out at rock-bottom prices. One farm in Shelby, Nebraska was mortgaged at $4,100 and sold for $49.50. One-fourth of the entire state of Mississippi was auctioned off <em data-effect=\"italics\">in a single day<\/em> at a foreclosure auction in April 1932.<\/p>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp39540864\">Not all farmers tried to keep their land. Some of those who had arrived only recently, in an attempt to capitalize on the earlier prosperity, simply walked away. In hard-hit Oklahoma, thousands of farmers packed up what they could and walked or drove away from the land they thought would be their future.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3>Moving West<\/h3>\r\nThe Okies, as such westward migrants were disparagingly called by their new neighbors, were the most visible group on the move during the Depression, lured by rumors of jobs in far-flung regions of the country. Men from all over the country, some abandoning families, hitched rides, hopped freight cars, or otherwise made their way around the country. By 1932, sociologists were estimating that millions of men were on the roads and rails traveling the country.\u00a0Popular magazines and newspapers were filled with stories of homeless boys and the newly-mobile veterans of the Bonus Army commandeering boxcars. Popular culture, such as William Wellman\u2019s 1933 film,\u00a0<em>Wild Boys of the Road,<\/em>\u00a0and, most famously, John Steinbeck\u2019s\u00a0<em>The Grapes of Wrath<\/em>, published in 1939 and turned into a hit movie a year later, captured the Depression\u2019s dislocated populations.\r\n\r\nThese years witnessed the first significant reversal in the flow of people between rural and urban areas. Thousands of city dwellers fled the jobless cities and moved to the country looking for work.\u00a0As relief efforts floundered, many state and local officials threw up barriers to migration, making it difficult for newcomers to receive relief or find work. Some state legislatures made it a crime to bring poor migrants into the state and allowed local officials to deport migrants to neighboring states. In the winter of 1935\u20131936, California, Florida, and Colorado established \u201cborder blockades\u201d to block poor migrants from their states and reduce competition with local residents for jobs. A billboard outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, informed potential migrants that there were \u201cNO JOBS in California\u201d and warned them to \u201cKEEP Out.\u201d[footnote]James N. Gregory, <em>American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 22.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_6024\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"605\"]<a href=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5696\/2022\/04\/04153722\/Family-Walking-on-Highway-19361-1000x562.jpeg\"><img class=\"wp-image-6024 \" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5696\/2022\/04\/04153722\/Family-Walking-on-Highway-19361-1000x562.jpeg\" alt=\"Migrant family walking with their belongings on a dirt road. A small child is in a wheel barrow packed with blankets. \" width=\"605\" height=\"340\" \/><\/a> <strong>Figure 4<\/strong>. During her assignment as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Dorothea Lange documented the movement of migrant families forced from their homes by drought and economic depression. This family, captured by Lange in 1938, was in the process of traveling 124 miles by foot, across Oklahoma, because the father was ill and therefore unable to receive relief or WPA work.\u00a0Library of Congress.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nSympathy for migrants, however, accelerated late in the Depression with the publication of John Steinbeck\u2019s\u00a0<em>The Grapes of Wrath<\/em>. The Joad family\u2019s struggles drew attention to the plight of Depression-era migrants and, just a month after the nationwide release of the film version, Congress created the Select Committee to Investigate the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens. Starting in 1940, the committee held widely publicized hearings. But it was too late. Within a year of its founding, defense industries were already gearing up at the outbreak of World War II, and the \u201cproblem\u201d of migration suddenly became a\u00a0<em>lack<\/em>\u00a0of migrants needed to fill jobs in the war industry. Such relief, however, was nowhere to be found in the pre-war 1930s.\r\n<h3>Exclusionary Politics<\/h3>\r\nAmericans meanwhile feared foreign workers willing to labor for low wages. The\u00a0<em>Saturday Evening Post<\/em>\u00a0warned that foreign immigrants, who were \u201ccompelled to accept employment on any terms and conditions offered,\u201d would exacerbate the economic crisis.\u00a0On September 8, 1930, the Hoover administration issued a press release on the administration of immigration laws \u201cunder existing conditions of unemployment.\u201d Hoover instructed consular officers to scrutinize carefully the visa applications of those \u201clikely to become public charges\u201d and suggested that this might include denying visas to most, if not all, alien laborers and artisans. The crisis itself had stifled foreign immigration, but such restrictive and exclusionary actions in the first years of the Depression intensified its effects. The number of European visas issued fell roughly 60 percent while deportations dramatically increased. Between 1930 and 1932, fifty-four thousand people were deported. An additional forty-four thousand deportable aliens left \u201cvoluntarily.\u201d[footnote]Cybelle Fox, <em>Three Worlds of Relief<\/em> (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 127.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nExclusionary measures hit Mexican immigrants particularly hard. The State Department made a concerted effort to reduce immigration from Mexico as early as 1929, and Hoover\u2019s executive actions arrived the following year. Officials in the Southwest led a coordinated effort to push out Mexican immigrants. In Los Angeles, the Citizens Committee on Coordination of Unemployment Relief began working closely with federal officials in early 1931 to conduct deportation raids, while the Los Angeles County Department of Charities began a simultaneous drive to repatriate Mexicans and Mexican Americans on relief, negotiating a charity rate with the railroads to return Mexicans \u201cvoluntarily\u201d to their home country. According to the federal census, from 1930 to 1940 the Mexican-born population living in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas fell from 616,998 to 377,433. The next president, Franklin Roosevelt, did not indulge anti-immigrant sentiment as willingly as Hoover had. Under the New Deal, the Immigration and Naturalization Service halted some of the Hoover administration\u2019s most divisive practices, but with jobs suddenly scarce, hostile attitudes intensified, and official policies became less welcoming. As the cycle turned again, immigration plummeted and deportations rose. Over the course of the Depression, more people left the United States than entered it.\r\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\r\n<h3>Link to Learning: The Deportation of Mexican Americans<\/h3>\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_8009\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"506\"]<a href=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5696\/2022\/04\/18151426\/1600px-Mexican_Repatriation_1931.jpeg\"><img class=\"wp-image-8009\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5696\/2022\/04\/18151426\/1600px-Mexican_Repatriation_1931.jpeg\" alt=\"Men and women waving goodbye next to a train track.\" width=\"506\" height=\"312\" \/><\/a> <strong>Figure 5<\/strong>. Relatives and friends wave goodbye to a train carrying 1,500 persons being expelled from Los Angeles back to Mexico on August 20, 1931.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nLeading up to the Great Depression, multiple waves of Mexican immigrants came to the United States seeking economic opportunities. By 1930, the Census reported nearly 600,000 Mexicans living in the United States; however, it is believed this number was well below the actual total. Also by the late 1920s, many Mexican immigrants had American-born children who were, in accordance with the Fourteenth Amendment, automatically considered citizens of the United States.\r\n\r\nWhen the stock market crashed and Americans suddenly struggled to find jobs, Hoover announced the <strong>Mexican Repatriation Act<\/strong> which deported those of Mexican descent with the intent that it would create jobs for those that did not appear ethnically Mexican. The term \u201crepatriation\u201d was a misnomer because many of those that left were coerced or forced to leave under false pretenses. Many left willingly at the time, fearing that if they remained, they would eventually be forced to leave. Immigrants were offered free train rides to Mexico and left the United States not knowing what their future would hold.\r\n\r\nOf the estimated 400,000 to 1,000,000 people deported, somewhere between 40-60% of those were U.S.-born citizens, many of them children who were culturally and legally American. This unconstitutional deportation of American citizens had a massive impact on hundreds of thousands of families. Many of these children lost access to education and were poverty-stricken upon their removal to Mexico. And while most children left with their Mexican-born parents, some children remained in the United States, never to see their parents again.\r\n\r\nAuthors Raymond Rodriguez and Francisco Balderama co-authored <em>Decade of Betrayal<\/em>, examining these unconstitutional deportations. Rodriguez was ten years old when his father suddenly returned to Mexico alone and never returned. Balderama and the late Rodriguez wanted to ensure this event in U.S. history would not be forgotten. While the U.S. federal government has not issued an apology, in 2005 California issued the Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program. There have not yet been any reparations granted to the surviving victims.[footnote]Valenciana, Christine. 2006. \u201cUnconstitutional Deportation of Mexican Americans.\u201d Multicultural Education 13 (3): 4-9. https:\/\/files.eric.ed.gov\/fulltext\/EJ759627.pdf[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nYou can watch these videos to learn more:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sW_VVxAWm2U\">Albino Pineda Tells His Family Story of Repatriation In The 1930s<\/a><\/li>\r\n \t<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GMZt9B7ZHXE\">The Unconstitutional Deportation of U.S Citizens with Mexican ancestry and Mexicans in the 1930's<\/a><\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\r\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\r\nhttps:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/9d7951d1-aae1-47b6-801c-f354d6f65c79\r\n\r\nhttps:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/76d7c4ac-8bf4-4be3-87f4-0eef9ff2a351\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div class=\"textbox key-takeaways\">\r\n<h3>Caroline Henderson on the Dust Bowl<\/h3>\r\n<blockquote id=\"fs-idm22026752\">\r\n<div>Now we are facing a fourth year of failure. There can be no wheat for us in 1935 in spite of all our careful and expensive work in preparing ground, sowing and re-sowing our allocated acreage. Native grass pastures are permanently damaged, in many cases hopelessly ruined, smothered under by drifted sand. Fences are buried under banks of thistles and hard packed earth or undermined by the eroding action of the wind and lying flat on the ground. Less traveled roads are impassable, covered deep under by sand or the finer silt-like loam. Orchards, groves and hedge-rows cultivated for many years with patient care are dead or dying\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. Impossible it seems not to grieve that the work of hands should prove so perishable. \u2014Caroline Henderson, Shelton, Oklahoma, 1935<\/div><\/blockquote>\r\n<p id=\"fs-idp2359360\">Much like other farm families whose livelihoods were destroyed by the Dust Bowl, Caroline Henderson describes a level of hardship that many Americans living in Depression-ravaged cities could never understand. Despite their hard work, millions of Americans were losing both their produce and their homes, sometimes in as little as forty-eight hours, to environmental catastrophes. The contrast between the laborious tending of the land and its sudden annihilation is powerful in this account. Note Henderson\u2019s references to that which is \u201cdead,\u201d \u201cdying,\u201d and \u201cperishable,\u201d and contrast those terms with her depiction of the \u201ccareful and expensive work\u201d undertaken by her family's own hands. Many simply could not understand how such a catastrophe could have occurred.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<div id=\"fs-idm10510336\" class=\"history my-story\" data-type=\"note\" data-label=\"My Story\">\r\n<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\r\n<h3>Glossary<\/h3>\r\n<strong>Dust Bowl:\u00a0<\/strong>the area in the middle of the country that had been badly over-farmed in the 1920s and suffered from a terrible drought that coincided with the Great Depression; the name came from the \u201cblack blizzard\u201d of topsoil and dust that blew through the area\r\n\r\n<strong>Mexican Repatriation Act:<\/strong>\u00a0a policy enacted between 1929 and 1939 that resulted in the deportation and repatriation of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\n<h3>Learning Objectives<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Identify the unique challenges that farmers in the Great Plains faced during the Great Depression<\/li>\n<li>Describe the circumstances and significance of the Dust Bowl<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Rural America During the Depression<\/h2>\n<p id=\"fs-idp34563232\">Despite the widely held belief that rural Americans suffered less in the Great Depression due to their ability to at least grow their own food, this was not the case. Farmers, ranchers, and their families suffered incredible losses during the Depression. Life for all rural Americans was difficult. Farmers largely did not experience the widespread prosperity of the 1920s. Although continued advancements in farming techniques and agricultural machinery led to increased agricultural production, decreasing demand (particularly in the previous markets created by World War I) steadily drove down commodity prices. As a result, farmers could barely pay the debt they owed on machinery and land mortgages, and even then could do so only as a result of generous lines of credit from banks. While factory workers may have lost their jobs and savings in the crash, many farmers also lost their homes, due to the thousands of farm foreclosures sought by desperate bankers. Between 1930 and 1935, nearly 750,000 family farms disappeared through foreclosure or bankruptcy. Even for those who managed to keep their farms, there was little market for their crops. Unemployed workers had less money to spend on food, and when they did purchase goods, economic conditions had driven prices so low that farmers earned very little in the way of profit. A now-famous example of the farmer\u2019s plight is that farmers would simply burn corn to stay warm in the winter when the price of coal began to exceed that of corn.<\/p>\n<p>On the Great Plains, environmental catastrophe deepened America\u2019s longstanding agricultural crisis and magnified the tragedy of the Depression. Beginning in 1932, severe droughts hit from Texas to the Dakotas and lasted until at least 1936.<\/p>\n<h2>Environmental Catastrophe Meets Economic Hardship: The Dust Bowl<\/h2>\n<div style=\"width: 530px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23203140\/CNX_History_25_03_DustBowl.jpg\" alt=\"A photograph shows a group of houses on the Great Plains. A massive dust cloud fills the sky overhead.\" width=\"520\" height=\"339\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 1.<\/strong> The dust storms that blew through the Great Plains were epic in scale. Drifts of dirt piled up against doors and windows. People wore goggles and tied rags over their mouths to keep the dust out. (credit: U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>From the turn of the century through much of World War I, farmers in the Great Plains experienced prosperity due to unusually good growing conditions, high commodity prices, and generous government farming policies that led to a rush for land. As the federal government continued to purchase all excess produce for the war effort, farmers and ranchers fell into several bad practices, including mortgaging their farms and borrowing money against future production in order to expand. However, after the war, prosperity rapidly dwindled, particularly during the recession of 1921. Seeking to recoup their losses through economies of scale in which they would expand their production to take full advantage of their available land and machinery, farmers plowed under native grasses to plant acre after acre of wheat, with little regard for the long-term repercussions to the soil. Regardless of these misguided efforts, commodity prices continued to drop, finally plummeting in 1929, when the price of wheat dropped from two dollars to forty cents per bushel.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 407px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images-archive-read-only\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/884\/2015\/08\/23203142\/CNX_History_25_03_Farm.jpg\" alt=\"A photograph shows an abandoned farmhouse and farm equipment that were largely buried under dust.\" width=\"397\" height=\"298\" data-media-type=\"image\/jpeg\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 2.<\/strong> As the Dust Bowl continued in the Great Plains, many had to abandon their land and equipment, as captured in this image from 1936, taken in Dallas, South Dakota. (credit: United States Department of Agriculture)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h3>Drought<\/h3>\n<p id=\"fs-idp29269520\">Exacerbating the problem was a massive drought that began in 1931 and lasted for eight terrible years. Dust storms roiled the Great Plains, creating huge, choking clouds that piled up in doorways and filtered into homes through closed windows.<\/p>\n<p>The droughts compounded years of agricultural mismanagement. To grow their crops, Plains farmers had plowed up natural ground cover that had taken ages to form over the surface of the dry Plains states. Relatively wet decades had protected them, but during the early 1930s, without rain, the exposed fertile topsoil turned to dust, and without sod or windbreaks such as trees, rolling winds churned the dust into massive storms that blotted out the sky, choked settlers and livestock, and rained dirt not only across the region but as far east as Washington, D.C., New England, and ships on the Atlantic Ocean. The <strong>Dust Bowl<\/strong>, as the region became known, exposed all-too-late the need for conservation. The region\u2019s farmers, already hit by years of foreclosures and declining commodity prices, were decimated.\u00a0For many in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas who were \u201cbaked out, blown out, and broke,\u201d their only hope was to travel west to California, whose rains still brought bountiful harvests and\u2014potentially\u2014jobs for farmworkers. It was an exodus. Oklahoma lost 440,000 people, or a full 18.4 percent of its 1930 population, to outmigration.<\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idp25662464\">The suffering of farmers during the Dust Bowl years took many forms. Livestock died or had to be sold, as there was no money for feed. Crops intended to feed the family withered and died in the drought. Terrifying dust storms became more and more frequent, as \u201cblack blizzards\u201d of dirt blew across the landscape and created a new illness known as \u201cdust pneumonia.\u201d The land suffered as well. In 1935 alone, over 850 million tons of topsoil blew away. To put this number in perspective, geologists estimate that it takes the earth five hundred years to naturally regenerate one inch of topsoil; yet, just one significant dust storm could destroy a similar amount. In their desperation to get more from the land, farmers had stripped it of the delicate balance that kept it healthy. Unaware of the consequences, they had moved away from such traditional practices as rotating crops and planning alternate growing seasons so that land could lay fallow between plantings and thus regenerate. The land was effectively worked to death in the pursuit of short-term gain.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox key-takeaways\">\n<h3>Migrant mother<\/h3>\n<p>Dorothea Lange\u2019s\u00a0<em>Migrant Mother<\/em>\u00a0became one of the most enduring images of the Dust Bowl and the ensuing westward exodus. Lange, a photographer for the Farm Security Administration, captured the image at a migrant farmworker camp in Nipomo, California, in 1936. In the photograph a young mother stares out with a worried, weary expression. She was a migrant, having left her home in Oklahoma to follow the crops to the Golden State. She took part in what many in the mid-1930s were beginning to recognize as a vast migration of families out of the southwestern Plains states. In the image she cradles an infant and supports two older children, who cling to her. Lange\u2019s photo encapsulated the nation\u2019s struggle. The subject of the photograph seemed used to hard work but down on her luck, and uncertain about what the future might hold.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6021\" style=\"width: 513px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5696\/2022\/04\/04153431\/Lange-Migrant-Mother-e1408474615332.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6021\" class=\"wp-image-6021\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5696\/2022\/04\/04153431\/Lange-Migrant-Mother-e1408474615332.jpeg\" alt=\"This iconic photograph made real the suffering of millions during the Great Depression.\" width=\"503\" height=\"640\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-6021\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 3<\/strong>. This iconic 1936 photograph by Dorothea Lange of a destitute, thirty-two-year-old mother of seven made real the suffering of millions during the Great Depression.\u00a0Library of Congress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"textbox examples\">\n<h3>Watch It<\/h3>\n<p>The Dust Bowl was a time of terrible weather conditions across huge swaths of America&#8217;s agricultural land due to poor farming practices and persistent drought. One of the most devastating of these storms became known as Black Sunday.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/plugin.3playmedia.com\/show?mf=8197319&amp;p3sdk_version=1.10.1&amp;p=20361&amp;pt=375&amp;video_id=pJ9QOcVt1Hc&amp;video_target=tpm-plugin-1kkemykm-pJ9QOcVt1Hc\" width=\"800px\" height=\"450px\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0px\" marginheight=\"0px\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\">You can view the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/course-building.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/US+history+II\/TheDustBowlandtheDepression.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">transcript for \u201cThe Dust Bowl and the Depression\u201d here (opens in new window)<\/a>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Country Bank Closures<\/h2>\n<p id=\"fs-idp1263920\">Unlike most factory workers in the cities, in many cases, farmers lost their homes when they lost their livelihood. Most farms and ranches were originally mortgaged to small country banks that understood the dynamics of farming, but as these banks failed, they often sold rural mortgages to larger eastern banks that were less concerned with the specifics of farm life. With the effects of the drought and low commodity prices, farmers could not pay their local banks, which in turn lacked funds to pay the large urban banks. Ultimately, the large banks foreclosed on the farms, often swallowing up the small country banks in the process. It is worth noting that of the five thousand banks that closed between 1930 and 1932, over 75 percent were country banks in locations with populations under 2,500. Given this dynamic, it is easy to see why farmers in the Great Plains grew wary of big-city bankers.<\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idm10480224\">For farmers who survived the initial crash, the situation worsened, particularly in the Great Plains where years of overproduction and rapidly declining commodity prices took their toll. Prices continued to decline, and as farmers tried to stay afloat, they produced still more crops, which drove prices even lower. Farms failed at an astounding rate, and farmers sold out at rock-bottom prices. One farm in Shelby, Nebraska was mortgaged at $4,100 and sold for $49.50. One-fourth of the entire state of Mississippi was auctioned off <em data-effect=\"italics\">in a single day<\/em> at a foreclosure auction in April 1932.<\/p>\n<p id=\"fs-idp39540864\">Not all farmers tried to keep their land. Some of those who had arrived only recently, in an attempt to capitalize on the earlier prosperity, simply walked away. In hard-hit Oklahoma, thousands of farmers packed up what they could and walked or drove away from the land they thought would be their future.<\/p>\n<h3>Moving West<\/h3>\n<p>The Okies, as such westward migrants were disparagingly called by their new neighbors, were the most visible group on the move during the Depression, lured by rumors of jobs in far-flung regions of the country. Men from all over the country, some abandoning families, hitched rides, hopped freight cars, or otherwise made their way around the country. By 1932, sociologists were estimating that millions of men were on the roads and rails traveling the country.\u00a0Popular magazines and newspapers were filled with stories of homeless boys and the newly-mobile veterans of the Bonus Army commandeering boxcars. Popular culture, such as William Wellman\u2019s 1933 film,\u00a0<em>Wild Boys of the Road,<\/em>\u00a0and, most famously, John Steinbeck\u2019s\u00a0<em>The Grapes of Wrath<\/em>, published in 1939 and turned into a hit movie a year later, captured the Depression\u2019s dislocated populations.<\/p>\n<p>These years witnessed the first significant reversal in the flow of people between rural and urban areas. Thousands of city dwellers fled the jobless cities and moved to the country looking for work.\u00a0As relief efforts floundered, many state and local officials threw up barriers to migration, making it difficult for newcomers to receive relief or find work. Some state legislatures made it a crime to bring poor migrants into the state and allowed local officials to deport migrants to neighboring states. In the winter of 1935\u20131936, California, Florida, and Colorado established \u201cborder blockades\u201d to block poor migrants from their states and reduce competition with local residents for jobs. A billboard outside Tulsa, Oklahoma, informed potential migrants that there were \u201cNO JOBS in California\u201d and warned them to \u201cKEEP Out.\u201d<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"James N. Gregory, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 22.\" id=\"return-footnote-6003-1\" href=\"#footnote-6003-1\" aria-label=\"Footnote 1\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_6024\" style=\"width: 615px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5696\/2022\/04\/04153722\/Family-Walking-on-Highway-19361-1000x562.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6024\" class=\"wp-image-6024\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5696\/2022\/04\/04153722\/Family-Walking-on-Highway-19361-1000x562.jpeg\" alt=\"Migrant family walking with their belongings on a dirt road. A small child is in a wheel barrow packed with blankets.\" width=\"605\" height=\"340\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-6024\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 4<\/strong>. During her assignment as a photographer for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Dorothea Lange documented the movement of migrant families forced from their homes by drought and economic depression. This family, captured by Lange in 1938, was in the process of traveling 124 miles by foot, across Oklahoma, because the father was ill and therefore unable to receive relief or WPA work.\u00a0Library of Congress.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Sympathy for migrants, however, accelerated late in the Depression with the publication of John Steinbeck\u2019s\u00a0<em>The Grapes of Wrath<\/em>. The Joad family\u2019s struggles drew attention to the plight of Depression-era migrants and, just a month after the nationwide release of the film version, Congress created the Select Committee to Investigate the Interstate Migration of Destitute Citizens. Starting in 1940, the committee held widely publicized hearings. But it was too late. Within a year of its founding, defense industries were already gearing up at the outbreak of World War II, and the \u201cproblem\u201d of migration suddenly became a\u00a0<em>lack<\/em>\u00a0of migrants needed to fill jobs in the war industry. Such relief, however, was nowhere to be found in the pre-war 1930s.<\/p>\n<h3>Exclusionary Politics<\/h3>\n<p>Americans meanwhile feared foreign workers willing to labor for low wages. The\u00a0<em>Saturday Evening Post<\/em>\u00a0warned that foreign immigrants, who were \u201ccompelled to accept employment on any terms and conditions offered,\u201d would exacerbate the economic crisis.\u00a0On September 8, 1930, the Hoover administration issued a press release on the administration of immigration laws \u201cunder existing conditions of unemployment.\u201d Hoover instructed consular officers to scrutinize carefully the visa applications of those \u201clikely to become public charges\u201d and suggested that this might include denying visas to most, if not all, alien laborers and artisans. The crisis itself had stifled foreign immigration, but such restrictive and exclusionary actions in the first years of the Depression intensified its effects. The number of European visas issued fell roughly 60 percent while deportations dramatically increased. Between 1930 and 1932, fifty-four thousand people were deported. An additional forty-four thousand deportable aliens left \u201cvoluntarily.\u201d<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"Cybelle Fox, Three Worlds of Relief (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 127.\" id=\"return-footnote-6003-2\" href=\"#footnote-6003-2\" aria-label=\"Footnote 2\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[2]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Exclusionary measures hit Mexican immigrants particularly hard. The State Department made a concerted effort to reduce immigration from Mexico as early as 1929, and Hoover\u2019s executive actions arrived the following year. Officials in the Southwest led a coordinated effort to push out Mexican immigrants. In Los Angeles, the Citizens Committee on Coordination of Unemployment Relief began working closely with federal officials in early 1931 to conduct deportation raids, while the Los Angeles County Department of Charities began a simultaneous drive to repatriate Mexicans and Mexican Americans on relief, negotiating a charity rate with the railroads to return Mexicans \u201cvoluntarily\u201d to their home country. According to the federal census, from 1930 to 1940 the Mexican-born population living in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas fell from 616,998 to 377,433. The next president, Franklin Roosevelt, did not indulge anti-immigrant sentiment as willingly as Hoover had. Under the New Deal, the Immigration and Naturalization Service halted some of the Hoover administration\u2019s most divisive practices, but with jobs suddenly scarce, hostile attitudes intensified, and official policies became less welcoming. As the cycle turned again, immigration plummeted and deportations rose. Over the course of the Depression, more people left the United States than entered it.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox exercises\">\n<h3>Link to Learning: The Deportation of Mexican Americans<\/h3>\n<div id=\"attachment_8009\" style=\"width: 516px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5696\/2022\/04\/18151426\/1600px-Mexican_Repatriation_1931.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8009\" class=\"wp-image-8009\" src=\"https:\/\/s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com\/courses-images\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5696\/2022\/04\/18151426\/1600px-Mexican_Repatriation_1931.jpeg\" alt=\"Men and women waving goodbye next to a train track.\" width=\"506\" height=\"312\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-8009\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><strong>Figure 5<\/strong>. Relatives and friends wave goodbye to a train carrying 1,500 persons being expelled from Los Angeles back to Mexico on August 20, 1931.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Leading up to the Great Depression, multiple waves of Mexican immigrants came to the United States seeking economic opportunities. By 1930, the Census reported nearly 600,000 Mexicans living in the United States; however, it is believed this number was well below the actual total. Also by the late 1920s, many Mexican immigrants had American-born children who were, in accordance with the Fourteenth Amendment, automatically considered citizens of the United States.<\/p>\n<p>When the stock market crashed and Americans suddenly struggled to find jobs, Hoover announced the <strong>Mexican Repatriation Act<\/strong> which deported those of Mexican descent with the intent that it would create jobs for those that did not appear ethnically Mexican. The term \u201crepatriation\u201d was a misnomer because many of those that left were coerced or forced to leave under false pretenses. Many left willingly at the time, fearing that if they remained, they would eventually be forced to leave. Immigrants were offered free train rides to Mexico and left the United States not knowing what their future would hold.<\/p>\n<p>Of the estimated 400,000 to 1,000,000 people deported, somewhere between 40-60% of those were U.S.-born citizens, many of them children who were culturally and legally American. This unconstitutional deportation of American citizens had a massive impact on hundreds of thousands of families. Many of these children lost access to education and were poverty-stricken upon their removal to Mexico. And while most children left with their Mexican-born parents, some children remained in the United States, never to see their parents again.<\/p>\n<p>Authors Raymond Rodriguez and Francisco Balderama co-authored <em>Decade of Betrayal<\/em>, examining these unconstitutional deportations. Rodriguez was ten years old when his father suddenly returned to Mexico alone and never returned. Balderama and the late Rodriguez wanted to ensure this event in U.S. history would not be forgotten. While the U.S. federal government has not issued an apology, in 2005 California issued the Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program. There have not yet been any reparations granted to the surviving victims.<a class=\"footnote\" title=\"Valenciana, Christine. 2006. \u201cUnconstitutional Deportation of Mexican Americans.\u201d Multicultural Education 13 (3): 4-9. https:\/\/files.eric.ed.gov\/fulltext\/EJ759627.pdf\" id=\"return-footnote-6003-3\" href=\"#footnote-6003-3\" aria-label=\"Footnote 3\"><sup class=\"footnote\">[3]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n<p>You can watch these videos to learn more:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sW_VVxAWm2U\">Albino Pineda Tells His Family Story of Repatriation In The 1930s<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GMZt9B7ZHXE\">The Unconstitutional Deportation of U.S Citizens with Mexican ancestry and Mexicans in the 1930&#8217;s<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"textbox tryit\">\n<h3>Try It<\/h3>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"assessment_practice_9d7951d1-aae1-47b6-801c-f354d6f65c79\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/9d7951d1-aae1-47b6-801c-f354d6f65c79?iframe_resize_id=assessment_practice_id_9d7951d1-aae1-47b6-801c-f354d6f65c79\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:300px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\t<iframe id=\"assessment_practice_76d7c4ac-8bf4-4be3-87f4-0eef9ff2a351\" class=\"resizable\" src=\"https:\/\/assess.lumenlearning.com\/practice\/76d7c4ac-8bf4-4be3-87f4-0eef9ff2a351?iframe_resize_id=assessment_practice_id_76d7c4ac-8bf4-4be3-87f4-0eef9ff2a351\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none;width:100%;height:100%;min-height:300px;\"><br \/>\n\t<\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"textbox key-takeaways\">\n<h3>Caroline Henderson on the Dust Bowl<\/h3>\n<blockquote id=\"fs-idm22026752\">\n<div>Now we are facing a fourth year of failure. There can be no wheat for us in 1935 in spite of all our careful and expensive work in preparing ground, sowing and re-sowing our allocated acreage. Native grass pastures are permanently damaged, in many cases hopelessly ruined, smothered under by drifted sand. Fences are buried under banks of thistles and hard packed earth or undermined by the eroding action of the wind and lying flat on the ground. Less traveled roads are impassable, covered deep under by sand or the finer silt-like loam. Orchards, groves and hedge-rows cultivated for many years with patient care are dead or dying\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. Impossible it seems not to grieve that the work of hands should prove so perishable. \u2014Caroline Henderson, Shelton, Oklahoma, 1935<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p id=\"fs-idp2359360\">Much like other farm families whose livelihoods were destroyed by the Dust Bowl, Caroline Henderson describes a level of hardship that many Americans living in Depression-ravaged cities could never understand. Despite their hard work, millions of Americans were losing both their produce and their homes, sometimes in as little as forty-eight hours, to environmental catastrophes. The contrast between the laborious tending of the land and its sudden annihilation is powerful in this account. Note Henderson\u2019s references to that which is \u201cdead,\u201d \u201cdying,\u201d and \u201cperishable,\u201d and contrast those terms with her depiction of the \u201ccareful and expensive work\u201d undertaken by her family&#8217;s own hands. Many simply could not understand how such a catastrophe could have occurred.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"fs-idm10510336\" class=\"history my-story\" data-type=\"note\" data-label=\"My Story\">\n<div class=\"textbox learning-objectives\">\n<h3>Glossary<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Dust Bowl:\u00a0<\/strong>the area in the middle of the country that had been badly over-farmed in the 1920s and suffered from a terrible drought that coincided with the Great Depression; the name came from the \u201cblack blizzard\u201d of topsoil and dust that blew through the area<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mexican Repatriation Act:<\/strong>\u00a0a policy enacted between 1929 and 1939 that resulted in the deportation and repatriation of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t <section class=\"citations-section\" role=\"contentinfo\">\n\t\t\t <h3>Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t <div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <div id=\"citation-list-6003\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <div class=\"licensing\"><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Original<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>Modification, adaptation, and original content. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Caleigh Abente for Lumen Learning. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Lumen Learning. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">CC licensed content, Shared previously<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>US History. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: OpenStax. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history\">http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\">CC BY: Attribution<\/a><\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Access for free at https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/1-introduction<\/li><li>The Great Depression. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: The American Yawp. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/text\/23-the-great-depression\/#IV_The_Lived_Experience_of_the_Great_Depression\">https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/text\/23-the-great-depression\/#IV_The_Lived_Experience_of_the_Great_Depression<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><li>Mexican Repatriation. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Wikipedia. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mexican_Repatriation\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mexican_Repatriation<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><li>Mexican Repatriation. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Wikipedia. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Mexican_Repatriation,_1931.jpg\">https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/File:Mexican_Repatriation,_1931.jpg<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\">CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">All rights reserved content<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>The Dust Bowl. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: NBC News Learn. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pJ9QOcVt1Hc\">https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pJ9QOcVt1Hc<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em>Other<\/em>. <strong>License Terms<\/strong>: Standard YouTube License<\/li><\/ul><div class=\"license-attribution-dropdown-subheading\">Public domain content<\/div><ul class=\"citation-list\"><li>Migrant Mother. <strong>Authored by<\/strong>: Dorothea Lange. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Library of Congress. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/pictures\/item\/fsa1998021539\/PP\/.\">http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/pictures\/item\/fsa1998021539\/PP\/.<\/a>. <strong>Project<\/strong>: Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/about\/pdm\">Public Domain: No Known Copyright<\/a><\/em><\/li><li>Immigration and Relocation in US History. <strong>Provided by<\/strong>: Library of Congress. <strong>Located at<\/strong>: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.loc.gov\/classroom-materials\/immigration\/mexican\/a-growing-community\/\">https:\/\/www.loc.gov\/classroom-materials\/immigration\/mexican\/a-growing-community\/<\/a>. <strong>License<\/strong>: <em><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"license\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/about\/pdm\">Public Domain: No Known Copyright<\/a><\/em><\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t <\/div>\n\t\t\t <\/section><hr class=\"before-footnotes clear\" \/><div class=\"footnotes\"><ol><li id=\"footnote-6003-1\">James N. Gregory, <em>American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 22. <a href=\"#return-footnote-6003-1\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 1\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><li id=\"footnote-6003-2\">Cybelle Fox, <em>Three Worlds of Relief<\/em> (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 127. <a href=\"#return-footnote-6003-2\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 2\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><li id=\"footnote-6003-3\">Valenciana, Christine. 2006. \u201cUnconstitutional Deportation of Mexican Americans.\u201d Multicultural Education 13 (3): 4-9. https:\/\/files.eric.ed.gov\/fulltext\/EJ759627.pdf <a href=\"#return-footnote-6003-3\" class=\"return-footnote\" aria-label=\"Return to footnote 3\">&crarr;<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"author":29,"menu_order":11,"template":"","meta":{"_candela_citation":"[{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"US History\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"OpenStax\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/openstaxcollege.org\/textbooks\/us-history\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by\",\"license_terms\":\"Access for free at https:\/\/openstax.org\/books\/us-history\/pages\/1-introduction\"},{\"type\":\"cc\",\"description\":\"The Great Depression\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"The American Yawp\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.americanyawp.com\/text\/23-the-great-depression\/#IV_The_Lived_Experience_of_the_Great_Depression\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"cc-by-sa\",\"license_terms\":\"\"},{\"type\":\"copyrighted_video\",\"description\":\"The Dust Bowl\",\"author\":\"\",\"organization\":\"NBC News Learn\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pJ9QOcVt1Hc\",\"project\":\"\",\"license\":\"other\",\"license_terms\":\"Standard YouTube License\"},{\"type\":\"pd\",\"description\":\"Migrant Mother\",\"author\":\"Dorothea Lange\",\"organization\":\"Library of Congress\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/pictures\/item\/fsa1998021539\/PP\/.\",\"project\":\"Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. 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