Transcript

9.5.25 · History Hour

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to radiois History Show. I'm your host
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and reader for today, Joseph Bolt, so happy to be
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with you for this time. And before we begin the
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day's show, we need to remind you that Radio I
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is listener driven and we welcome any of your comments
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or suggestions about the programming. So call us please at
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eight five nine four two two six three nine zero
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if you have any comments or suggestions, or you just
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want to talk about our programming. As you know, RADIOI
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is a reading service intended for people who are blind
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or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
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printed material. I'll cite the sources for today's program as
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we go along, So let's get started. I thought i'd
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talk about a couple of different subjects today. The first
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one I want to get into a little bit is
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the dust Bowl, so let me let me read about that.
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The dust Bowl was the name given to the drought
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stricken Southern Plains region of the United States, which suffered
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severe dust storms during a drought in the nineteen thirties.
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As high winds and choking dust swept the region from
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Texas to Nebraska. People in livestock were killed and crops
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failed across the entire region. The dust Bowl intensified the
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crushing economic impacts of the Great Depression and drove many
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farming families on a desperate migration in search of work
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and better living conditions. The dust Bowl was caused by
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several economic and agricultural factors, including federal land policies, changes
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in regional weather, farm economics, and other cultural factors. After
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the Civil War, a series of federal land acts coaxed
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pioneers westward by incentivizing farming in the Great Plains. Many
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of these late nineteenth and twentieth century settlers lived by
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the superstition quote that reign follows the plow end quote. Well.
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Immigrants and land speculators, politicians, and even some scientists believe
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that homesteady and agricultural would permanently affect the climate of
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the semi arid Great Plains region, making it more conducive
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to farming. This false belief was linked to manifest destiny,
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an attitude that Americans had a sacred duty to expand west.
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A series of wet years during the period created a
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further misunderstanding of the region's ecology and led to the
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intensive cultivation of increasingly marginal lands that couldn't be reached
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by irrigation. Rising wheat prices in the nineteen tens and
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twenties and increased demand for wheat from Europe during World
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War One encouraged farmers to plow up millions of acres
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of native grassland to plant wheat, corn, and other row crops.
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But as the United States entered the Great Depression, wheat
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prices plummeted. In desperation, farmers tore up even more grassland
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in an attempt to harvest a bumper crop and break even.
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Crops began to fail with the onset of drought in
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nineteen thirty one, exposing the bare, over plowed farmland. Without
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deep rooted prairie grasses to hold the soil in place,
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it began to blow away. Eroding soil led to massive
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dust storms and economic devastation, especially in the southern plains.
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The dust Bowl, also known as the Dirty Thirties, started
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in nineteen thirty and lasted for about a decade, but
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its long term economic impacts on the region lingered much longer.
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Severe drought hit the Midwest and Southern Plains in nineteen
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thirty Massive dust storms began in nineteen thirty one A
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series of drought years followed, further exacerbating the environmental disaster.
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By nineteen thirty four, and estimated thirty five million acres
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of formally cultivated land had been rendered useless for farming,
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while another one hundred and twenty five million acres an
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area roughly three quarters the size of Texas, was rapidly
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losing its top soil. Regular rainfall returned to the region
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by the end of nineteen thirty nine, bringing the dust
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Bowl Years to a close. The economic effects, however, persisted.
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Population declines in the worst hit counties where the agricultural
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value of the land failed to recover, continued well into
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the nineteen fifties. During the dust Bowl period, seer dust storms,
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often called black blizzards, swept the Great Plains. Some of
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these carried topsoil from Texas and Oklahoma as far east
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as Washington, d c. And New York City, and coated
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ships in the Atlantic Ocean with dust Billowing. Clouds of
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dust would darken the sky, sometimes for days at a time.
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In many places, the dust drifted like snow, and residents
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had to clear it with shovels. Dust worked its way
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through the cracks of even well sealed homes, leaving a
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coating on food and skin and furniture. Some people developed
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what was called dust pneumonia and experienced chess pain and
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difficulty breathing. Much like miners, dust Bowl residents exhibited signs
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of silicosis from breathing in the extremely fine silt particulates,
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which had high silica content. Dust pneumonia, called the Brown plague,
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killed hundreds and was particularly lethal for infants, children, and
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the elderly. It's unclear exactly how many people may have
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died from this condition. On or rather May eleventh, nineteen
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thirty four, a massive dust storm two miles high traveled
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two thousand miles to the east coast, blotting out monuments
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such as the Statue of Liberty and the US Capital.
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The worst days in the dust bowl era was referred
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to as Black Sunday. A large dust cloud traveled from
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central Nebraska on the morning of April fourteenth, nineteen thirty five,
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south across the Great Plains down to the border of Mexico.
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As the dust storm reached towns and cities, it created
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zero visibility conditions and caused temperatures to drop by more
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than twenty degrees fahrenheit. According to the National Weather Service,
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the dust cloud was estimated to be around five to
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six hundred feet high and reached speeds of sixty miles
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per hour. The storm caused twenty people in Kansas to
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die as a result of dust pneumonia and dust suffocation.
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As many as three million tons of topsoil are estimated
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to have blown off the Great Plains during Black Sunday.
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Associated Press reporter Robert Geiger opened his April fifteenth, nineteen
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thirty five dispatch with this line, quote three little words
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achingly familiar on a Western farmer's tongue rule life in
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the dust bowl of the continent if it rains end quote.
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Dust bowl was probably a throwaway line for Geiger, since
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two days later he referred to the disaster zone as
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the dust belt. Nevertheless, within weeks, the term had entered
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the national lexicon. If the dust storms that turned daylight
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to darkness weren't apocalyptic enough, seemingly biblical plagues of jack
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rabbits and grasshoppers descended on the plains and destroyed whatever
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minger crops could grow to combat the hundreds of thousands
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of jack rabbits that overran the dust bowl, States in
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nineteen thirty five, some towns staged rabbit drives, in which
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townsmen corralled the jack rabbits in pins and smashed them
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to death with clubs and baseball bats. Thick clouds of grasshoppers,
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as large as twenty three thousand insects per acre, according
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to one estimate, also swept over farms and consumed everything
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in their wakes. What the sun left, the grasshoppers took.
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt said during a fireside chat the
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National Guard was called out to crush grasshoppers with tractors
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and burn infested fields, while the Sevillian Conservation Corps spread
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an insecticide of arsenic molasses and brand. So much static
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electricity built up between the ground and air born dust
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that blue flames leaped from barbed wire fences and well
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wishers shaking hands could generate a spark so powerful it
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could knock them to the ground. Since static electricity could
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short out engines and car radios, motorists driving through dust
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storms dragged chains from behind their automobiles to ground their cars.
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There were few things desperate dust bowl residents didn't try
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to make it rain. Some followed the old folklore of
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killing snakes and hanging them belly up on fences. Others
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tried shock and awe farmers. In one Texas town paid
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a self professed rainmaker five hundred dollars to fire off
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rockets carrying an explosive mixture of dynamite and nitroglycerine to
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induce shoper Corporations also touted their products to the federal
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government as possible solutions. Sisselcraft proposed covering the farms with
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waterproof paper, while a new Jersey asphalt company suggested paving
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the plains. President Franklin D. Roosevelt established a number of
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measures to help alleviate the plight of poor and displaced farmers.
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He also addressed the environmental degradation that had led to
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the dust Bowl in the first place. As part of
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Roosevelt's New Deal, Congress established the Soil Erosion Service and
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the Prairie State's Forestry Project in nineteen thirty five. These
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programs put local farmers to work planting trees as wind
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breaks on farms across the Great Plains. The Soil Erosion Service,
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now called the Natural Resources Conservation Service n RCS, developed
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and promoted new farming techniques to combat the problem of
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soil erosion. There are conflicting accounts of just how many
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people migrated away from the Great Plains because of the
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dust Bowl. Some historians say that roughly two and a
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half million people left the dust Bowl states of Texas,
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New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma during the nineteen thirties.
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Some reports state that Oklahoma alone lost four hundred and
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forty thousand people to migration, and that many of them
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were poverty stricken and traveled west looking for work. Other
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historians state that John Steinbeck's story of migrating tenant farmers
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in his Pulitzer Prize winning nineteen thirty nine novel The
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Grapes of Wrath tend to obscure the fact that upwards
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of three quarters of farmers in the dust Bowl stayed put.
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Dust Bowl refugees did not flood California. Only sixteen thousand
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of the one point two million migrants to California during
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the nineteen thirties came from the drought stricken region. Most
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dust Bowl refugees tended to move only to neighboring states.
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These dust Bowl refugees were called Oaki's OKI's faced discrimination
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menial labor and pitiful wages. Upon reaching California, many of
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them lived in shandytowns in tents along irrigation ditches. Oki
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soon became a term of disdain used to refer to
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any poor dust Bowl migrant, regardless of their state of origin.
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They were greeted with hostility and signs, such as one
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in California at a diner that read quote Okie's and
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dogs not aloud inside end quote The dust Bowl in
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the suffering endured by those who survived it captured the
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hearts and imaginations of the nation's artists, musicians, and writers.
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Photographer Dorothea Lang commented or rather documented rule poverty with
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a series of photographs for FDR's Farm Securities Administration. And
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artist Alexandria Hogue achieved renown with his dust Bowl landscapes.
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And folk musician Woody gut Thrie and his semi autobiography
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autobiographical first album, dust Bowl Ballads of nineteen forty told
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stories of economic hardship faced by Oakie's in California. Guthrie,
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and Oklahoma native, left his home state with thousands of
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others looking for work during the dust Bowl. The Great
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Plains region began receiving normal amounts of rainfall in nineteen
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forty one, officially ending the dust Bowl era. The start
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of World War II also helped turn the nation's economy around,
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as production increased and more jobs opened up. Many farmers
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who remained in the dust bowl began practicing sustainable farming,
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such as terracing, crop rotation, and strip cropping. The proactive
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measures taken to promote soil conservation lessened the impact of
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another severe drought that struck the Great Plains in the
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nineteen fifties. Sources for this particular story came from the
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History dot com website entitled The dust Bowl, written by
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History dot com editors and of twenty twenty five, and
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from History dot com Ten Things you may not know
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about the dust Bowl and this was written by Christopher
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Klein in May of twenty twenty five, and the Collector
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dot com The Devastating dust Bowl of the Great Depression
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written by Amy Haynes in November twenty twenty three. Now,
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switching from the dust Bowl, let's go back in history
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to the Ice Age. Now, let me read your story
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about that. The most recent ice age peaked between twenty
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four thousand and twenty one thousand years ago, when vast
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ice sheets covered North America and northern Europe, and mountain
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ranges like Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro and South America's Andes were
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in in glaciers. At that point, our Homo sapiens ancestors
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had migrated from the warm African heartland into northern Europe
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and Eurasian latitudes, severely impacted by the sinking temperatures, armed
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with big, creative brains and sophisticated tools, though these early
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modern humans, nearly identical to ourselves physically, not only survived
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but thrived in their harsh surroundings. For Homo Sapiens living
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during the Last Ice Age, there were several critical advantages
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to having a large brain, explains Brian Fagan, an emeritus
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professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara,
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an author of many books, including Chromagnon, How the Ice
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Age gave Birth to the first modern humans and Climate
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Chaos Lessons on Survival from the ancestors. One of the
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most important things about Homo sapiens is that we had
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fluent speech, says Fagan, Plus the ability to conceptualize and
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plan ahead. With the advent of language, knowledge about the
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natural world and new technologies could be shared between neighboring
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bands of humans and also passed down from generation to
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generation via storytellers. They had institutional memory through symbolic storytelling,
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which gave them a relationship with the forces of the environment,
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the supernatural forces which governed their world, and through music, dance,
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and art. Our ancestors collected and transmitted vast amounts of
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information about the seasons and edible plants, animal migrations, weather patterns,
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and more. Elaborate cave paintings at sites like Lascal and
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Chauves in France display the intimate understanding that late Ice
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Age humans possessed about the natural world, especially the prey
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animals they depended on for survival. When wildlife biologists look
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at those paintings of reindeer and bison, they can tell
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you what time of year it was painted, just from
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the appearance of the animals hides and skins, says Fagan.
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The last Ice Age corresponds with the Upper Paleolithic period,
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in which humans made great leaps forward in tool making
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and weaponry, including the first tools used exclusively for making
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other tools. One of the most important of these was
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called a burn a humble looking rock chisel that was
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used to cut grooves and notches into bone and antler,
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lightweight material that was also hard and durable. The intricate
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spearheads and harpoon tips made from that bone and antler
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were small and light enough to be carried on foot
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by hunters over long distances, and were also detachable and interchangeable,
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creating the first compound tools. Think of the Swiss army knife.
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It's the same thing, says Fagan. The weaponry they made
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covered an extraordinary range of specialized tools, most of which
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were made from grooving, antler and bone. But even these
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sophisticated hunting weapons were useless outside the close range attacks,
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which sometimes required the hunter to leap on the back
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of his massive prey. Once again, our human ancestors used
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their intelligence and planning skills to take some of the
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danger and guesswork out of hunting. In one famed hunting
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ground in East in France, ice age hunters built fires
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every fall and spring to corral migrating herds of wild
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horses and reindeer into a narrow valley marked by a
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limestone tower known as the Rash the Sulutra. Once in
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the corral, the animals could safely and easily be killed
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at close quarters, harvesting in abundance of meat that was
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then dried for the summer and winter months. Archaeological evidence
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shows that this well coordinated slaughter went on for tens
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of thousands of years. When the first humans migrated to
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northern climates about forty five thousand years ago, they devised
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rudimentary clothing to protect themselves from the cold. They draped
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themselves with loose fitting hides that doubled as sleeping bags,
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baby carriers, and hand protection for chiseling stone. But everything
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changed around thirty thousand years ago and with what Fagin
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argues as the most important invention in human history, the needle.
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If you saw a needle from twenty thousand or thirty
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thousand years ago, you'd know what it was in an instant,
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A very fine pointed tool with a hole in one
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end to put thread through. Says Facin. The miracle of
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the needle was that it enabled humans to make tight
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fitting clothing that was tailored to the individual, and that's
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vitalote Like modern mountaineering clothing, clothes from the Late Ice
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Age were meant to be worn in layers An Ice
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age tailor would carefully select different animal skins reindeer, arctic foxes, hairs,
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even birds like ptarmigants, and sowed together three or four layers,
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from moisture waking underwear to waterproof pants and parkaths. Thread
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was made from wild flax and other vegetable fibers, and
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even dyed different colors like turquoise and pink. The result
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was a fitted, versatile wardrobe that fully protected its wear
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from sub freezing temperatures for shelter in the coldest months.
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Our Ice age ancestors didn't live deep in caves, as
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Victorian archaeologists once believed, but they did make homes in
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natural rock shelters. These were usually roomy depressions cut into
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the walls of river beds beneath a protective overhang. Fagin
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says of strong evidence that ice age humans made extensive
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modifications to weather proof there rock shelters. They draped large
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hides from the overhangs to protect themselves from piercing winds,
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and built internal tent like structures made of wooden poles
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covered with sown hides. All of this was situated around
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a blazing hearth, which reflected heat and light off the
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rock walls. In the brief summer months, the hunters would
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move out into the open plains that stretched from the
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Atlantic coast of Europe all the way to Siberia, with
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cold temperatures persisting at night. Shelter was taken in the
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dome shaped huts partially dug into the earth. The framework
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was built from a lattice of mammoth bones, either hunted
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or raided from carcasses, says Fagin. On top of that,
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they'd lay sod or animal hides to make a house
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that was occupied for months on end. The source for
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that particular story came from history dot com How Early
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Humans Survived the Ice Age, written by David Ruse in
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July twenty twenty five. Well that about does it for
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this time in or with Radio Eye History. I'm sure
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hope that you enjoyed to day's I thank you for
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listening and giving me your time to day, I'm your host,
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Joseph Bolt, and I'll be back and next time with
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another chapter on Radio I History. Until then, happy trails,