Worster, The Black Blizzard Rolls In

"The thirties began in economic depression and in drought. The first of those disasters usually gets all the attention, although for the many Americans living on farms drought was the more serious problem."

"During the thirties serious drought threatened a great part of the nation. The persistent center, however, shifted from the East to the Great Plains, beginning in 1931, when much of Montana and the Dakotas became almost as arid as the Sonoran Desert. Farmers there and almost everywhere else watched the scorched earth crack open, heard the gray grass crunch underfoot, and worried about how long they would be able to pay their bills."

"Intense heat accompanied the drought, along with economic losses the nation could ill afford. In the summer of 1934, Nebraska reached 118 degrees, Iowa, 115. In Illinois thermometers stuck at over 100 degrees for so long that 370 people died-and one man, who had been living in a refrigerator to keep cool, was treated for frostbite. Two years later, when the country was described by Newsweek as "a vast simmering caldron..."

"By 1936, farm losses had reached $25 million a day, and more than 2 million farmers were drawing relief checks. Rexford Tugwell, head of the Resettlement Administration, who toured the burning plains that year, saw "a picture of complete destruction"--"one of the most serious peacetime problems in the nation's history."

"Droughts are an inevitable fact of life on the plains, an extreme one occurring roughly every twenty years, and milder ones every three or four. They have always brought with them blowing dust where the ground was bare of crops or native grass. Dust was so familiar an event that no one was surprised to see it appear when the dry weather began in 1931. But no one was prepared for what came later: dust storms of such violence that they made the drought only a secondary problem -- storms of such destructive force that they left the region reeling in confusion and fear."

"The last of the major dust storms that year was on 14 April, 1935, and it was months before the damages could be fully calculated. Those who had been caught outside in one of the 'spring dusters were, understandably, most worried about their lungs. An epidemic of respiratory infections and something called "dust pneumonia" broke out across the plains."

"Whether they brought laughter or tears, the dust storms that swept across the southern plains in the 1930s created the most severe environmental catastrophe in the entire history of the white man on this continent. In no other instance was there greater or more sustained damage to the American land, and there have been few times when so much tragedy was visited on its inhabitants. Not even the Depression was more devastating, economically. And in ecological terms we have nothing in the nation's past, nothing even in the polluted present, that compares. Suffice it to conclude here that in the decade of the 1930s the dust storms of the plains were an unqualified disaster."

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Malone, The New Deal and the West

"During the period from 1933 to 1939 , the New Deal produced the most sweeping wave of governmental reform in U.S. history. The president and his program would soon enjoy their greatest popularity in the South and the West, precisely those regions that so desperately sought to escape, with federal assistance, their "colonial" subservience to the East." (94)

"For instance, the West's pre-eminent economic interest was agriculture. For years, agrarian spokesmen had been pleading for direct federal aid to depressed farmers and ranchers. Now, the experimentally inclined New Dealers gave it to them by adopting the so-called domestic allotment plan... This revolutionary legislation aimed to reduce the crippling commodity surpluses and thereby to raise farm prices to the same level of "parity" with general prices that had existed in the good years before World War I. To accomplish this, the law created an Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA), which granted direct benefit payments to farmers who voluntarily reduced their acreages. In dramatic fashion, the federal government thus began a new policy of direct subsidies to farmers. "

"In 1935 came two new agencies that would work mighty changes on the West: the Rural Electrification Administration, which promoted the building of electrical lines to remote locations through a program of low-interest loans, and the Soil Conservation Service, which began restoring eroded lands."(95)

"A major part of this endeavor was the creation of forested "shelterbelts" to abate the Great Plains dust storms. To the surprise of many doubters, this program proved successful; and by 1940, more than forty million trees grew along twenty-five hundred miles of handsome shelterbelts." (96)

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The Closing of the Public Domain in 1935

"Western ranchers got their New Deal bonanza with a federal program of purchasing surplus livestock and with enactment in 1934 of the Taylor Grazing Act. This epochal measure opened the federally owned rangelands, almost all of them in the West, on a regularized basis to grazing leases by stockmen under a tightly controlled system of permits and fees like those administered by the Forest Service in the national forests. By the close of the New Deal, more than eleven million livestock were feeding on over 140 million federally owned acres." (96)

"In a true sense, the Taylor Grazing Act signaled the federal government's admission of the frontier's closing. Henceforth, western lands must be husbanded, not given away; all unreserved federal lands would be closed to entry, thereby ending the age-old policy of homesteading and cheap sales. Stockmen, miners, and lumbermen could access these lands in the future only on the government's terms. In February 1935, President Roosevelt formalized the new policy by closing the public domain forevermore to settlement. Later that spring, by proclamation, he withdrew the remaining 165.7 million acres of public domain, which were set aside for grazing and other classified usages. This change of course in public policy marked one of the most important and far­reaching governmental actions in American history, one that would go far toward fashioning the modern West.

"By late 1936, the Bureau of Reclamation had nineteen major western dams under construction. In addition, this agency and others built scores of smaller, earthen dams to serve various localities." (98)

"The great New Deal dams meant more than jobs and subsidies. They epitomized the new Uncle Sam's West. In these years of national need and national and regional pride, few criticized the projects or even pointed out the incongruity that one federal agency was spending millions to bring new western lands into agricultural production while another one (the AAA) was spending millions to take other western lands out of production." (99)

"With New Deal encouragement, the economic and political power of organized labor rose to unprecedented heights.

To the masses of westerners, as to all Americans, the most visible and important New Deal programs were those that provided public "relief" to the unemployed and dependent. In 1933, the Roosevelt administration broke sharply from the cautious Hoover policy and created the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which granted federal relief funds directly to the states. " (101)

"Consequently, in 1935 the federal government took another giant step with the creation of the famous Works Progress Administration (WPA ), which now bypassed the states and placed the unemployed directly on federal work relief.... Many western counties built their modern systems of graveled rural roads with federal WPA dollars; and many a western town received federally built schools, courthouses, and sewage systems via the WPA, which they could not otherwise have afforded for years to come". (102)

"Politically, the New Deal swept the West, knocking down conservative and Republican establishments of the 1920s and initiating the greatest period of liberal and Democratic domination of government the region has ever seen." (103)

"Relief dollars and other forms of political patronage had much to do with directing progressive support away from the Republicans and toward the Democrats." (106)

"Thus, as the New Deal played out in the late 1930s, the western attitude toward it shifted, in James Patterson's words, from enthusiasm to grudging acceptance, then to suspicion." Just as they had a half-century before, and as they would a half-century later, westerners, more than most Americans, enjoyed their cake of federal subsidy even as they relished the pleasure of complaining about it." (107)

"Complaints aside, no one could truthfully deny that the New Deal had gone far toward lifting the region from the grip of depression or that it had introduced a new era in federal governance of the West. In this sense, the New Deal's impact on the West was truly revolutionary." (107)

"The mighty war effort transformed all regions of the country, but none so much as the still wide-open West. Millions flocked to the region's new military installations and wartime production plants, which were geared primarily to the war in the Pacific. Every facet of the western economy and social order changed under the sweeping forces of this greatest of all national crusades in American history." (107-8)

"Every western state claimed at least one sizable military installation, some old and some new, by 1942; but in some states, the military invasion was simply overwhelming." (108)

"More than 8,000,000 people moved to the lands west of the Mississippi during the ten years after 1940, with 3,500,000 moving to California alone, which surged to a population of 10,586,000 by mid-century. Booming war-time industry accounted for even more of this remarkable flood of immigration than did the military. Industrialists received huge federal contracts..." (109)

"The state of California received roughly $35 billion in federal expenditures during the war, fully 10 percent of the national total. Two great military industries propelled the boom in California (and its two neighbors to the north): aircraft production and shipbuilding." (109)

"In addition to defense industries, the war also boomed the West's basic extractive industries, and added some new ones as well. Mining and petroleum extraction surged to capacity, and the large majority of U.S. domestic oil now came from the West." (111)

"For farmers and ranchers, on the other hand, booming wartime markets brought high prices and prosperity. After Pearl Harbor, the federal government began mass-purchasing foodstuffs for the military and for its allies. By 1943, it was buying up 80 percent of all lower-grade beef, 35 percent of lamb and mutton, and 50 percent of canned fruit and vegetables." (111)

"Whether lured west by science, the military, or industry, the wartime immigrants represented the greatest inflow of humanity in the region's history. Denver grew by 20 percent during the war, attracting 100,000 new residents; and Tucson nearly doubled, from 48,000 to over 90,000. With its dam, its magnesium plant, a cluster of military installations, and the beginnings of its modern gambling-entertainment business, Las Vegas tripled in population from 8,422 in 1940 to 24,624 in 1950. Yet even the precipitous growth of these interior cities was dwarfed by what happened to their sisters on the Pacific Coast ." (113)

"The boom brought to the West an unprecedented prosperity but also an unprecedented chaos of social problems: traffic jams that lasted for hours, endless lines of shoppers with their ration books, and sharp increases in crime, venereal diseases, juvenile delinquency of unsupervised adolescents, and divorce rates. Racial tensions mounted apace as, for the first time, western cities drew large black populations. Seattle, for instance, saw its black populace expand from under 4,000 to nearly 30,000 from 1940 to 19450 Spanish-speaking Americans also suffered the pangs of wartime discrimination. " (115-6)

"Amid the rejoicing over war's end in August 1945, amid such a mood of non-partisanship and patriotism, few paused to reflect on the enormous changes that the war, and the preceding depression and New Deal, had wrought on the nation and the region. The brief fifteen years between 1930 and 1945 had been the most hectic in the history of the West, witnessing unprecedented economic and environmental disasters, the massive new federal presence introduced by the New Deal and the war, and of course the socioeconomic transformations of 1941-45." (117)

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Poor Land Management Practices

A number of poor land management practices in the Great Plains region increased the vulnerability of the area before the 1930s drought. Some of the land use patterns and methods cultivation in the region can be traced back to the settlement of the Great Plains nearly 100 years earlier. At that time, little was known of the region's climate. Several expeditions had explored the region, but they were not studying the region for its agricultural potential, and, furthermore, their findings went into government reports that were not readily available to the general public (Fite, 1966). Misleading information, however, was plentiful. “Boosters” of the region, hoping to promote settlement, put forth glowing but inaccurate accounts of the Great Plains' agricultural potential. In addition to this inaccurate information, most settlers had little money or other assets, and their farming experience was based on conditions in the more humid eastern United States, so the crops and cultivation practices they chose often were not suitable for the Great Plains. But the earliest settlements occurred during a wet cycle, and the first crops flourished, so settlers were encouraged to continue practices that would later have to be abandoned. When droughts and harsh winters inevitably occurred, there was widespread economic hardship and human suffering, but the early settlers put these episodes behind them once the rains returned. Although adverse conditions forced many settlers to return to the eastern United States, even more continued to come west. The idea that the climate of the Great Plains was changing, particularly in response to human settlement, was popularly accepted in the last half of the 19th century. It was reflected in legislative acts such as the Timber Culture Act of 1873, which was based on the belief that if settlers planted trees they would be encouraging rainfall, and it was not until the 1890s that this idea was finally abandoned (White, 1991). Although repeated droughts tested settlers and local/state governments, the recurrence of periods of plentiful rainfall seemed to delay recognition of the need for changes in cultivation and land use practices.

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A Stronger Federal Presence

"The stock market crash of October 1929 particularly devastated rural America. Throughout the 1920s, the prosperity enjoyed by much of the nation usually did not include farmers and ranchers. The structure of industrial capitalism, the failed promise of agricultural prosperity after World War I, the increase in credit and related upward pressure on the price of land, and the drought of the late 1920s all contributed to stasis and then decline in the agricultural economy and to poverty and misfortune among farmers. Even irrigation, often the salvation of agriculturalists, could not reverse the trends that demonstrated agriculture's lack of viability in an industrial economy."

"With the onset of the Depression, the agricultural market collapsed entirely. Gross farm production decreased by 50 percent between 1929 and 1932, signaling that places dependent upon agriculture were in for hard times. With drought and depression came despair, and only President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal offered even a slim chance of reversing rural America's long- standing decline.

The New Deal emerged as one of the most revolutionary programs in American history involving the federal government. An unprecedented intervention into national economic and social affairs, it redefined the role of the state in American society. The Depression left as much as one-quarter of the workforce unemployed at any given time and precipitated a crisis in public confidence. American institutions seemed to have failed the people, and thousands simply gave up. Some starved, some begged, some rode the rails, and all felt that the promise of the nation had been tarnished. When Roosevelt ascended to the presidency, he brought an ebullience that his dour predecessor, Herbert Hoover, could not muster. Roosevelt's manner alone inspired hope, and the programs he espoused produced a tenuous optimism. The New Deal injected government money into the economy, creating jobs by the thousands, providing guarantees that became the basis of the American social “safety net” and building a range of projects that reshaped the national landscape."

"It also counteracted long-standing western resentment of the involvement of the federal government in what westerners considered local affairs. Since the settlement of the West, westerners often regarded the federal government as meddlers who deprived local people of the prerogatives of place. Westerners reacted against the General Land Office special agents who tried to administer western holdings, stood firmly against Reclamation Act of 1902, which benefitted the very western farmers who fought it, and let out a loud howl when Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed more than 7,000,00 million acres of national forest just before Congress curtailed his power to proclaim such lands in eleven western states. As long as western states had viable economies, they could protest federal efforts. During the Depression, many places that previously complained about federal intervention meekly waited their turn at the federal trough."

"The New Deal offered the possibility for a range of improvements; everywhere else in the destitute West, its programs built infrastructure. Federal programs designed to put people back to work first replaced and then supplanted private industry, accelerating the patterns that had begun when the Reclamation Service rescued irrigated agriculture along the Pecos . 3 Like much of the West, southeastern New Mexico and the trans-Pecos continued to look to outside benefactors to sustain regional life. The federal government, already regarded as a valuable and benevolent force in the Carlsbad area, became even more significant."

"In the national parks and monuments, the single most important channel of federal capital was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). During its nine-year existence, more than two million enrollees worked in 198 CCC camps in national park areas and 697 camps in state, county, and municipal parks. Under the various bureaus that administered CCC programs — the Emergency Conservation Work program (ECW), the Public Works Administration (PWA), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and others — more than one thousand miles of park roads and 249 miles of parkways were built in national park areas. CCC workers were counted among the fortunate during the Depression. As they earned the income that primed the pump of dormant economies in innumerable communities around the nation — all but five dollars of their monthly earnings of one dollar per day were sent home to their families — they also constructed the first genuine infrastructure in many national parks. The CCC built buildings and roads, landscaped grounds, cut fire trails and hauled brush, and especially in newly established or remote park areas, created the first facilities that ever existed. During the first twenty-five years of the National Park Service, no single entity did more for the parks than the CCC ."

"Like many other regions in the West, the Carlsbad-Guadalupe Mountains area was “rescued” by the New Deal and its associated federal presence. When little private economic activity existed, federal programs and the jobs they provided seemed like a godsend. That rescue continued with wartime federal programs in the region, enhancing the tendency toward dependence on the national government that had been an integral part of the history of the region and the larger West. Southeastern New Mexico and the trans-Pecos followed the dominant pattern, linking in partnership with federal agencies at the same time they pronounced their independence. If a difference existed, it could be found in the Carlsbad area, where despite potash mining and other activities, people seemed to more clearly recognize the significance of the federal presence. Their history with government involvement exceeded that of other parts of the region, also giving people the opportunity to integrate federal participation in the economy into their conception of self, and as a result, discount the federal contributions by inventing as their own endeavor. This created a complicated relationship with the federal government. As elsewhere in the West, people in southeastern New Mexico both needed and resented it, making its presence simultaneously the best and worst thing about their lives."

"By 1945, the widely held sense of independence in southeastern New Mexico and the trans-Pecos had been superseded by federal endeavors. Beginning with the creation of the federal water district and Carlsbad Cave National Monument, and continuing through the proclamation of the national park, the arrival of the CCC and other New Deal projects, and the military, the Carlsbad Caverns-Guadalupe Mountains region became as dependent on federal support, albeit from a range of agencies, as any locality in the West. As its importance grew, people of the region denied its centrality to their life. That complicated — even paradoxical — relationship opened the way for the conflicts of the postwar era."

Hal Rothman

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Federal Government Harming the West

"The past thirty years have seen the passage of increasingly harsh and harmful Federal environmental laws and regulations. This has led to Federal agencies closing Federal lands and declaring rights for plants and animals that supercede the rights of citizens to their property and their traditions and cultures. This has decimated rural economies, rural communities, and the ranches, farms, and activities that have made Americans the envy of the world.

"Nowhere have these harms to citizens from Federal laws been as numerous or egregious as in the West. Because of large Federal land ownerships the impacts of wolves, bull trout, Jumping Mice, blind fish, and Wilderness and Roadless designations plus Critical Habitats, land acquisitions, and easement offers to stressed landowners have exceeded the damage to date in the East or South or Midwest. However, anyone that has been keeping track of these things knows that just as the harms have accumulated in the West, so too will they (only at a slower pace) in the rest of the country.

"Because they are at the forefront of these harms, westerners have been forced to try and protect their interests and rights. The alternatives are to lose those rights such as use of their own property, or access to public property that goes unmanaged more every year, to even being able to access their own property by road. What have they found?"

They have found an increasingly autocratic Federal bureaucracy that not only disdains their protests but is also is staffed with Federal employees committed to de-populating rural areas so as to place them entirely under Federal controls. They have found State bureaucracies that they believed worked for them but that really work with Federal counterparts to preserve Federal funding, get new Federal funding, and ultimately share in the new authorities being transferred from States to Federal agencies. They have found Federal politicians with ironclad tenure that pander to far away urban coalitions, environmental extremists, and animal rights radicals that provide financial support and publicity. Finally, they have found State politicians that have grown meek and timid before Federal demands tied to Federal dollars. What have they done?"

"In Arizona and New Mexico counties have formed a coalition that even CROSSES STATE LINES to band together to address the increasing harm of Federal bureaucrats wielding environmental and animal rights mandates that harm Counties, ranches, rural communities, and the County tax base among other things. When governments sue government, the likelihood of positive results is greatly enhanced. I'd go so far as to predict that this movement will, as it goes forward, jar State governments and State bureaucracies back to a realization of their Constitutional responsibility to protect their citizens, their environment, and their way of life from all invaders be they a fish from China or a Federal bureaucrat from Washington, DC. West watching should be a very enlightening activity for all Americans in the future."

Jim Beers, 2004