CHAPTER 1

Introduction

John R. Wunder

The Dust Bowl experience was a seminal event for at least two generationsof Americans, whose lives it shaped or reshaped. The experiencewas felt especially by those directly involved in agriculture inportions of the Mississippi Valley—the farmers of Iowa, Minnesota,Missouri, and Arkansas—and it deeply touched the farmers and ranchersof the American Great Plains—the agriculturalists of North andSouth Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, Nebraska and Colorado, Kansasand Oklahoma, and New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle. The1930s in the heartland were difficult times.

This book is about those Americans of the Dust Bowl. The bookseeks to foster an understanding of the physical and mental dimensionsof the disaster. Through original documents of the times, it offers a glimpse into the human response to the Dust Bowl. The firstsection of the book includes contemporary accounts of the plight offarmers. Dust Bowl distress and anger, farmer strikes, and the farmers'march on Washington are captured in memoirs and news reportsof the times. The human response to this environmental catastropheis next observed in letters of self-doubt, attempts to find solutions inscience, and reflections on religious faith.

This volume also includes analyses of the Dust Bowl by historians,and they, too, focus on the human dimension of this environmentaldisaster. The first articles concern the personal responses of men,women, and children to their predicaments. The different ways menand women sought to cope with the Dust Bowl, the fact that somefarmers had to pursue extralegal activities, and the way religion triedto explain the disaster are probed. The history of farmer strikes, theFarm Holiday Movement, and the United Farmers League are described;the use of the media to provide political explanations is alsodiscussed. Finally, three historiographical articles explain the differentdimensions of the Dust Bowl and the farm revolts during the 1930s.Thus, both the documents and the articles search for explanations andanswers to such basic questions as why did the Dust Bowl happen,why did Americans react as they did, and how did the Dust Bowlaffect those who actually witnessed it, as well as their children andgrandchildren.

The first inkling of trouble came in the late 1920s. Prices for farmproducts steadily dropped. When drought conditions began to appearin several areas, many farmers had little, if any, capital reserves. Somefarmers, such as a Harrisburg, Arkansas, family of five who slept onthe floor of a one-room shanty, battled starvation. They survived onrabbits or by stealing a neighbor's hog. Others were very angry aboutthe economic squeeze and the seeming government indifference.

Indeed, the government sometimes appeared to make the problemsworse. Take Iowan Sam Krotter's difficulties, for example. Inspite of his observation that "the most hopeful animal in the world" isthe farmer, even Krotter began to doubt whether he could survive.Iowa and federal laws requiring tuberculin tests for milk cows weresteadily resisted by Iowa farmers. Krotter's jersey calf had been subjectedto a test, and the calf became sick and, eventually, worthless.Farmers saw themselves as being shafted; if their herds were deemedinfected by the test—a test most farmers saw as defective—they suffereda loss of two-thirds of their investment.

The cow war emerged from this distrust and from a showdownbetween farmers and government agents at William Butterbrodt's farmnear West Branch, Iowa, the birthplace of President Herbert Hoover.In a show of force, organized farmers threw veterinarians and thesheriff off the Butterbrodt homestead. The cow war accelerated.

As is the ease with social upheavals and unexpected events, peoplewho in normal times appear abnormal suddenly seem rational. Takethe ease of Norman Baker, hypnotist, cancer curer, and manufacturerof calliopes, who took to the radio to defend the farmers in the cowwar. Baker stirred up the pot of confusion, anger, and frustration. Afrightened Governor Dan Turner called out the National Guard, around1,400 strong. Everyone—1,000 farmers, the National Guard troops,and the Bakerites—converged on the Eversman farm a few miles northof Burlington, Iowa. It was a standoff. Vaccinations occurred, but thefarmers rubbed the cows' lumps so they couldn't be detected, and Iowanspaid $100,000 for the National Guard's holiday. This situationwas an omen in 1932.

The next two years were complicated by extreme drought, governmentparalysis, and farmer panic. Milo Reno organized the Farmers'Holiday Association, which spread throughout the northern Plainsand the Midwest. Farmers took a manifesto and agreed to hold theirproducts off the market until prices rose to cover production costsand to protect each other from those who would confiscate their land,equipment, animals, crops, and belongings.

Farmers went on strike in Plymouth County, Iowa. Milk trucksbecame a focal point because they carried milk produced by farmerswho were not honoring the strike. The strike had little effect on themarket and only increased farmers' frustrations. Some farmers brokeoff from the Farmers' Holiday Association and other farmers' organizationsand started their own local groups, which favored immediatedirect action. In Nebraska, trucks seized from a farmer by a NewmanGrove company were forcefully taken back by a group of farmers.When a tenant farmer near Petersburg died and his $400 mortgagewas not paid by his two sons, the bank foreclosed and ordered an auctionof the farm and the equipment. Farmers marched on the farmand intimidated those at the sale so that only a total of $7.10 was bidat the entire auction.

Committees of Action throughout Nebraska experienced someshort-term successes and generated a great deal of reaction. Theywere called the "Soviets" of Nebraska, and the state was compared to1917 Communist Russia. Businesspeople and the Catholic Church wereprominent in their opposition to the farmers; on at least one occasionthey used force to drive out farmers intent on rigging an auction. Aboveall, farmers wanted to avoid being "put on the road," losing everythingto a bank or creditor. Banding together seemed to help...